What do you call yourself?
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I had a teacher at high school called Ms Spedding*. She was my personal tutor for years 8 and 9. Once, during a health education lesson she was illustrating a point with a personal example and made a passing reference to her husband. A slightly cheeky boy stopped her and the following conversation ensued:
Cheeky boy: You're married?
Ms Spedding: Yes
Cheeky boy: So why are you not Mrs Spedding?
Ms Spedding: Well for starters Spedding is my maiden name...basically, I'm a Ms because I don't want people to know I'm married - it's private
Cheeky boy: But you just told us!
Ms Spedding: I don't mind telling you that I'm married, but it should be my choice whether or not to tell you - nobody should be able to know from my title
Whilst this obviously made sense, the general consensus was that whilst there was nothing wrong with it, it was a bit silly and unnecessary. What was wrong with people knowing her marital status? Surely it wasn't that big a deal?
It's only now I've got to the age at which it's entirely plausible that I might be married that I've begun to understand this. If I were applying for a job, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was married because I would almost certainly suffer discrimination. A married woman is much more likely to get up the duff than an unmarried one, and although it's illegal for employers to discriminate overtly against applicants on these grounds, discrimination does happen. It couldn't not happen when you consider the hassle and money it costs a company when one of their employees goes on maternity leave and/or wishes to work part time.
By the same token, I wouldn't want anyone to know specifically that I was unmarried in case I got the job because they thought I was a nice bit of skirt who they might be able to pork on the conference room table. And above a certain age, there is stigma attached to a woman being unmarried. If a woman is still a Miss by her mid-thirties, her attractiveness, sanity, interpersonal skills and sexual orientation will be called into question.
At least with so many couples cohabiting these days, being a Miss is no longer seen as a surefire indicator of sexual availability. But the issues surrounding employment are important enough in their own right. Women are at a massive disadvantage because of employers knowing their marital status. So really, the best thing to do is to become a Ms, right? Wrong.
An Australian man I know was telling me a while ago that one of the most surprising things he observed when he arrived in England was that there were very few Ms's around. Apparently back home, virtually all women are Ms, regardless of marital status. It's a title that truly provides anonymity.
Because virtually all unmarried women in this country are "Miss", a woman who has any other title is assumed to be married. Unless you specifically lie about your marital status by keeping the title Miss after you get married, people will know that you are married. And even then, if you're a Miss, people will assume that you are unmarried. There will still be an assumption about your marital status based on your title, whether it's correct or not. There is no anonymity. Women are forced to make statements of their marital status. A Miss is unmarried; a Mrs or a Ms is married.
Only if a large proportion of unmarried women took the title Ms would it do its intended job of giving a woman the same anonymity as a man. However, it would take a brave woman to do this. At my age I'm not going to take a title that might make prospective employers suspect that I was about to settle down into dungaree-wearing, jam-making, part-time-working domesticity. I'll become a Ms only when I reach an age at which it's regarded as more desirable to be married than not. And yet I know that if an unmarried feminist isn't willing to call herself Ms until she reaches a certain age, no unmarried woman will.
In Australia, women are free from the various stigmas associated with a woman being married or unmarried. Here, not enough unmarried women use the title Ms to make it a viable cloak of anonymity. Ms means you're married.
There's only one solution really. Get a PhD and become "Dr".
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