| Abstract [eng] |
According to the latest statistics, there have never been more single (single, divorced or widowed) people in the world. In this context, activists are becoming more vocal about the legal and political importance given to marriage, the stereotyping of single people in the culture industry, the myths of "happily ever after" and romantic love, the academic ignorance of the subject until now, and the changing image of economic power. Also, a very important aspect is the discursive changes - the single-positive movement, the concept of self-partnered, the recognition of the singlism effect as a discriminatory practice. However, despite the fact that new forms of intimacy and lifestyles that are not organised around a normative sexual form are proliferating around the world, many point out that society's attitude towards solo women remains highly problematic. Today, the solo woman is, as it were, trapped between macrosocial changes that promote singleness as a free choice, and entrenched cultural ideals that position married life as a normative practice, a state of ideals. As a result, the central problem addressed in this paper emerges: despite global changes, the status of the solo woman remains problematic in public perception. This is especially true in Lithuania, where a woman's single status can be one of the reasons why she is not fit to be president in the eyes of the public, and where the rhetoric of the traditional family is still very much present in contemporary political discourse. The current period offers a unique opportunity to explore the perception modes of two generations: our parents, who lived through the restoration of independence at a conscious age, and ours, who grew up in the already independent Lithuania, therefore the aim of this paper is to reveal the differences/similarities and to compare the two generations' self-identification modes related to the category of single woman. This academic work presents the debate in academia, the main assumptions that lead to such a complex and problematic societal attitude towards solo women, an overview of the most significant research conducted on the topic and its results, the main assumptions of the ideology of family and marriage, and the repertoires of the singlism - discrimination against the single people. Given the complexity of the term 'single', both in everyday discursive practices and in academia, and drawing on different mechanisms of interpreting the term, the paper discusses singleness as a social construct, a social category, a discursive practice, personal narratives, and a politics. In particular, it presents a definition of the portmodernist strand of identity and Byrnes's analytical model on which the qualitative research was formulated and implemented: interviews were conducted with representatives of two different generations of self-identified single women (those born 1960-75, those born 1993-2000) in order to explore and compare the two generations' modes of self-identification associated with the category of single woman. Looking at the findings of the study, i.e. in order to compare the self-identification modes of two generations of solo women, it could be argued that the younger generation is faced with a more internalised singlism and contradictory societal expectations - they are experiencing a dilemma of personal identity: on the one hand, they identify themselves and present themselves as free and independent women, on the other hand, they are questioning themselves as to why they are still single and are looking for opportunities for romantic relationships. Meanwhile, women of the older generation pay less attention to the reflection of their marital status, their self-identification contents consist of different priority aspects, they are less sensitive to the opinions of their environment, their personal and social identities are much more closely linked - they do not contradict each other in terms of their contents. |
