Singlism Is Real and I Have Experienced it

I am single. In fact, I’ve been single my entire professional career. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that being discriminated against for being single in the professional world has a name, and some academic backing: singlism.

Some will say it’s a myth, that it’s just another symptom of a generation of workers that feels entitled to everything. I know better, because I’ve experienced it first-hand.

Singlism isn’t a new phenomenon, but as an increasingly larger number of workers choose not to permanently partner up, it’s becoming an issue in the workplace. Even as recently as ten years ago, the chances of a significant minority of unmarried and/or childless individuals pointing out that they were being treated differently than their married with children peers would be hard to imagine. With the recession still ongoing, many young workers are choosing to delay major life milestones like getting married, buying a house, and having children, which puts them in a very similar situation. Although singlism is primarily focused on “true” singles, those that aren’t married and don’t have children, many of the same issues affect couples that are married but don’t have children as well.

The expectation is that singles, lacking spouses and families, are more capable of spending longer hours in the office. While a married person might need to leave promptly at 5pm to pick up a child from daycare or school, a single person has no such obligations. Instead, the single person’s obligations are entirely of their own making, and can presumably be cancelled, rescheduled, etc. There is an implicit guarantee, especially among women, that singles take on this additional burden with the understanding that when (not if) they get married and have children, they will be able to call on these benefits themselves. What this fails to address is what happens when an individual doesn’t get married or have children. Suddenly, they’re working a lot of extra hours and sacrificing their own happiness and well-being for the sake of their co-workers at the behest of their management, who encourage them to be “flexible.”

Rather than present a hypothetical situation, I’d like to reach into my own past and share an incident that happened a number of years ago, at one of my first jobs right out of college. This was the first time I had really encountered singlism in the workplace, but it wasn’t the last.

I had started a new job, and was coming up on my six month review. It wasn’t a formal performance review, but rather an informal mid-year, this is how you’re doing, this is what you can improve, etc. kind of review. I was a good employee. I came in early, I stayed late, I got my work done on time, took on new responsibilities whenever they offered themselves, and did whatever was asked of me with a smile. It was to my surprise, as you can imagine, when my director at the time expressed dissatisfaction with my performance. I was shocked. What more could I do? I was already working 50+ hours a week. He explained that my work and hours were fine, but that I was held to a different standard. He said that because I was young and single, that I should be working 60+ hours a week. That because I didn’t have kids or a family, there was no reason why I couldn’t.

To say that that statement bothered me greatly would be a titanic understatement. The implication that because I was young and single the expectation was that I would be working significantly harder than my married and/or with children co-workers for the same pay was deeply offensive. I said nothing at the time, being new and wanting to do my best, but to this day I’m still more than a little shocked that my former director actually felt OK saying that. To put it another way, it’s as if he had said that because I’m Jewish I should be assigned the financial side of a project, regardless of my other skills or experience. It’s discriminatory in the extreme, but he felt comfortable saying it anyway.

Going a step further, society actively rewards men for getting married. Married men, on average, make more money and get more promotions than their unmarried counterparts. The presumption is that a married man is supporting a spouse or family, but in large number of cases the man’s spouse is working as well. Couples in general receive significant tax breaks, discounts, and benefits unavailable to unmarried couples or singles. Moreover, it’s actually legal to discriminate against someone for being single. There are laws on the books that prevent the government and private organizations from denying benefits based on marital status, but that’s always been defined as being unable to discriminate against someone because they’re married, not because they’re single.

Earlier this year, Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell of The Atlantic took a look at the costs of being a single woman. Their discovery: compared to a similar married peer, the difference in cost of living over the single woman’s lifetime exceed a half million dollars. The counter-argument, of course, is that the savings given to the married couple are used to benefit their children, and children are a net positive for society. But what about childless married couples that are benefiting from being married, without producing the societally beneficial offspring?

The real question we have to start with is, “Is this a problem worth solving?”. I say it is. Singlism is real; it’s discrimination on the basis of lack of marital status. Private companies and the government should be required to offer single employees the same benefits as their married employees, and not require or request additional work beyond what they’d request of another married and/or with children employee. Beyond that, in what is sure to be the most unpopular thing I’ve ever said or written, maybe it’s time we take a look at how much benefit childless married couples are really providing to society, whether it’s worth the additional benefits society provides, and perhaps tie more of those benefits to having children, rather than just being married. That is a question to be answered by a better mind than mine, but it’s a question worth asking nonetheless.

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