WHY DOES MY TITLE STILL DEFINE MY MARITAL STATUS? A rant on women’s rights, language and lingering inequality

BY MARY M.D.

I want to discuss something that still gets on my last nerve every time I fill out a form, receive a letter or get introduced in a formal setting. Why, in the 21st century, am I still expected to reveal my marital status just to exist in the world?

Miss, Mrs., Ms. - take your pick. But each one says more about whether I’ve got a man than about who I am. Meanwhile men get to coast through life with the all-encompassing Mr., regardless of whether they’re single, married, divorced or living in a yurt with twelve cats. No one bats an eyelid. Why? Because a man’s relationship status has never been considered central to his social worth.

It’s exhausting.

Let’s rewind. Mr. comes from Master - a title of authority and control. A sign of respect, independence and historically - ownership. Convenient.

Then there’s Miss and Mrs., which come from Mistress - yes like that kind of mistress. But somewhere along the line society decided that women must be labelled according to whether they’re available, taken or have outlived a husband. Heaven forbid a woman’s identity stand on its own.

Ms., which I personally favour, only came about in the 20th century because surprise surprise women were getting tired of being defined by their marital status. It’s still not universally accepted. Some people think it’s confusing. What’s confusing is why any of this still matters.

Now, before someone starts waving around the vote like it fixed everything - yes we got the vote (eventually) - women over 30 were granted the right in 1918 and the rest of us had to wait another decade. We’ve chipped away at discriminatory laws and kicked open doors in education and the workplace. Great.

But let’s not pretend the job is done!

The Gender Pay Gap: Still real. Still frustrating. As of 2023, women in full-time work were paid nearly 8% less than men. And when you zoom in on women of colour, disabled women, or mothers? The gap just gets wider.

Leadership: Take a look at Parliament, boardrooms, or the upper ranks of most companies. Still a boys’ club. How many mediocre men are promoted over competent women because we’re “not quite the right fit”?

Unpaid labour: The invisible load - childcare, elder care, housework. Women do most of it and we’ve been socialised to feel guilty if we don’t. The result? Burnout and slowed careers.

Violence against women: One in four women will experience domestic abuse. The legal system is still failing to protect us. Harassment in public spaces? Constant. And don’t get me started on victim-blaming.

Reproductive rights: Better here than some places, sure - but access and stigma are still issues. And policies still tend to treat women’s bodies as political battlegrounds. 

Every time someone insists on knowing whether I’m a Miss or a Mrs., what they’re really asking is - who do you belong to? Are you single and ripe for the taking or safely claimed?

Men are never put in that position. Their identity is never boiled down to whether they’ve got a ring on their finger. Mine shouldn’t be either.

This stuff matters. Language shapes attitudes. And the fact that we still use different titles for women based on their relationships, when we don’t for men, says everything about how much further we have to go.

I’m not your Miss. I’m not your Mrs. I’m not your let’s guess her availability based on her title. I’m a woman, not a marital status. I’ll use Ms. if I have to use anything at all but what I really want is a world where this nonsense isn’t even relevant.

Yes we’ve made progress. But don’t mistake surface-level politeness for equality. As long as women are still defined by their proximity to men in titles, in pay, in power then we’ve got work to do. And no, I’m not going to smile sweetly about it.