Discrimination against unmarried adults has been well documented with respect to such issues as taxes, conditions of employment, and political rhetoric. Less well understood is discrimination affecting medical decisions that may be — literally — a matter of life or death. Since the 1980s, dozens of studies[1] in peer-reviewed medical journals have demonstrated that […]
Singlehood, academic work and pandemic life (by Ea Høg Utoft)
Published research article Utoft, E. H. (2020). ‘All the single ladies’ as the ideal academic during times of COVID‐19?. Gender, Work & Organization, 27(5), 778-787. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12478 In April 2020, the journal Gender, Work & Organization (GWO) published a call, expressing a wish to document living and working through the pandemic, and articles quickly began to emerge. I […]
Who would love me like this? – Fat Single Women and the Normativity of the Couple in Makeover TV Shows (by Susanne Ritter)
The body – especially the closely scrutinized female body – marks the individual as more orless (in)appropriate for the society it exists in. Fatness is commonly seen as being excludedfrom and incompatible with norms of femininity (Taylor 2021) and it is thus especiallystigmatizing for women. Similarly, especially for women, it can be stigmatizing to be […]
Diverse Intimacies: On friendship, communal living, and non-monogamy (By Varpu Alasuutari & Anna Heinonen)
Varpu Alasuutari & Anna Heinonen ”Being part of a couple is widely seen and felt to be an achievement, a stabilizing status characteristic of adulthood”, Sasha Roseneil and colleagues write in their insightful book The Tenacity of the Couple Norm: Intimate Citizenship Regimes in a Changing Europe (2020), arguing that anything else but coupledom sets people in […]
Sinkkuus Suomessa (Marjo Kolehmainen & Annukka Lahti)
Marjo Kolehmainen, Annukka Lahti Marraskuussa Suomessakin vietettii sinkkujen päivää. Vaikka kaupallisuudesta helppo kritisoida markkinakikaksi, on taustalla huomio sinkuista potentiaaisesti merkittävänä asiakasryhmänä. Sinkkujen määrä on lisääntynyt kaikissa länsimaissa merkittävästi 1960-luvulta lähtien etenkin avioerojen yleistymisen myötä. Erityisen paljon sinkkuja on Pohjoismaissa, myös Suomessa. Tätä selittää yksilökeskeinen kulttuuri, hyvinvointivaltioiden tuoma taloudellinen turva, avioerot hyväksyvä luterilainen uskonto sekä naisten […]
Online Summer Session: SINGLEHOOD & COMPANIONSHIP: Challenges and Opportunities for New Frameworks (July 27 – Aug 1, 2020)
The following online event ‘Singlehood & Companionship: Challenges and Opportunities for New Frameworks’ is organized in collaboration with The Research Network of Singlehood Studies. NSU Summer Session ‘Singlehood & Companionship: Challenges and Opportunities for New Frameworks’ takes the form of a reading group with pre-assigned texts that discuss singlehood, held via Zoom during the week […]
Singlehood and Seduction: A Mea Culpa (by Rachel O’Neill)
The following text is a shortened version of the keynote speech given by Rachel O’Neill at the launch event for the Research Network of Singlehood Studies that took place on 16-17 December 2019 in Tampere. In January 2018, I submitted the final proofs for my book Seduction: Men, Masculinity and Mediated Intimacy. An ethnography of […]
LGBTIQA+ singles: then and now (by Annukka Lahti)
The following text is a slightly modified version of the introduction speech by Annukka Lahti, originally written for the panel discussion on couple-normativity in the launch event of The Research Network of Singlehood Studies that took place on December 17, 2019 in Tampere. During the last twenty years, the political demands by the LGBTIQA+ movement […]