Why Calling Independent Single Women “Spinsters” Really Sucks

It’s time for a positive term for single women of a certain age

Licensed image ©Adobe Stock

Update 5th March 2021: This was my first post published on Medium. It’s still a relevant topic so I’ve reviewed and polished it. I was not in a relationship when I originally wrote this post.

Why are we still using an archaic term for single women?

Radio4 threw down the gauntlet today [October 2015] to find a replacement noun for “spinster”, describing the older woman who chooses to celebrate her single status.

I immediately rose to the challenge.

Even today its seems that common descriptions of unmarried older women define them in terms of their relationship to men: divorcée, widow, spinster.

But what about women who want a term that doesn’t pigeonhole them into a male-related status?

The word Spinster derives from a woman who spins.

Spinning thread, it seems, was the fate of any woman who didn’t bag a man before she passed child-bearing age and became an “old maid”.