Single Women

BOSTON -- There are times when political polling reminds me of one of Liz Carpenter's favorite stories. Back in the Carter administration when the indomitable Texan was working on women's rights, she asked a university president how his campus was broken down by sex. "Well, ma'am," he answered thoughtfully, "liquor is more of a problem." Over the years, sexual breakdowns became a regular feature in the polling firmament. The gender gap was discovered and then elevated to a truism, and finally divided into various subsets of the gene pool.

My mother went into paid work soon after my father's clothing store was flooded out in a hurricane, almost wiping him out. She had no choice. We needed the money. This was some two decades before a tidal wave of wives and mothers went into paid work. For the relatively few women with four-year college degrees, this change was the consequence of wider educational opportunity and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But the vast majority of women entered the paid workforce because male wages were dropping.

The recent census finding that there are about as many single women as married women nationwide has triggered a flood of speculation about the cultural fallout from this demographic shift. But now that the single woman has officially arrived, the implications are broader than cultural. This emerging majority could have significant influence over America's political future as well. Who, exactly, is she? For starters, most unmarried women don't lead lives straight out of Sex in the City.

As if it weren't enough that Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old writing/directing/acting phenom who started a revolution this year with her HBO series "Girls," scored a $3.5-million book deal and has been granted the unofficial but unimpeachable title of "voice of her generation," she also appears to have won the presidential election - or at least to have been one of the driving forces behind the guy who did. In a much-talked-about campaign video for...

Lane Hodes doesn't mince words. "The 'looking for a husband' concept baffles me." Don't get her wrong. The 26-year-old University of Maryland law student likes men, and she'll probably get married one day. But Hodes, like many unmarried women these days, is enjoying not being in a serious relationship. She didn't wait for a boyfriend to give her jewelry. When her birthday came around, she bought herself a diamond bracelet. And last year, Hodes vacationed in Las Vegas by herself, gambling in the casinos alone.

Owning a second home is typically something couples do. So Anne Waxman knew she was taking an unconventional step when she bought a second home as a single woman. "I always wanted a home in the country," said Waxman, 47, who lives on the West Side of Manhattan. "I didn't do it the way that would be best for me - with a man I'm married to - but I did it." Weeks before Waxman stumbled upon the house - a ramshackle four-bedroom house in East Jewett, N.Y., which she bought five years ago - she had been jarred by her father's sudden death.

Therese Easley fought off nine other bidders to buy her house in Sandtown last year, the first home for the 40-year-old single woman who grew up in a public housing development in East Baltimore. Ann Anderson, at 26, recently closed on her three-bedroom Federal Hill rowhouse, paying for it with 100 percent financing. And Kelly Mulligan, 29, moved into her one-bedroom condominium in Bolton Hill last month, where her mortgage is no more than the rent on her former apartment in Fells Point.

Once upon a time, the shortest distance between a maiden and her castle was a knight in shining armor.Not anymore.Statistics and the observations of people in the real estate and mortgage industries indicate that single women are buying property in record numbers. According to the Census Bureau, 56.9 percent of females living alone in the United States owned homes in 1998, up from 51.8 percent in 1988.That trend has manifested itself in Baltimore and the surrounding area, where many single women are choosing to exercise their growing buying power by purchasing homes.

THEY CALL it the Sex and the City vote, single women - 22 million of them by some counts - who didn't vote in 2000 and were thought to hold one of the keys to this presidential election. They were supposed to be a target audience for both George Bush and John Kerry, but a particularly important cohort for Kerry, who couldn't seem to get any traction among married women with children, the so-called security moms. But if the candidates were trying to talk to her, Denise Peterson wasn't listening.

Washington -- It all started with the Study: the now infamous Harvard-Yale "man shortage" study of 1986 that told college-educated single women over 30 they'd better start getting used to Soup for One.Reporter Susan Faludi was on her way to that fateful age and on her way to a wedding -- not hers -- when she opened a copy of Newsweek to face the grim news. She, like her similarly situated friends, were not amused to read that once they hit 30, they'd be more likely to be killed by a terrorist than find wedded bliss -- or wedded anything.

This is a story about recycling, and how everything is politically charged this election season. My husband carried our newspapers - which, by the way, he believes are hopelessly in the bag for President Barack Obama - to the curb the night before the recycling truck was scheduled. He left them there, not in a recycling bin, but in the cute, little box I keep in the kitchen to hold them. Next morning, the men on the recycling truck took the newspapers - and my cute, little box - and I cursed them.

Before moving with her boyfriend of three years to a Hampden home this September, Brandy Washington lived with two other women, both young professionals in their 20s, just like her. Delaying marriage is a lifestyle that has suited the 27-year-old. She and her boyfriend wanted to "try things out" and live together before becoming more serious - a far cry from her high-school-sweetheart parents, who married right out of college. Almost all of her peers, Washington said, are living the same way, either with friends or a long-term partner.

Before moving with her boyfriend of three years to a Hampden home this September, Brandy Washington lived with two other women, both young professionals in their 20s, just like her. Delaying marriage is a lifestyle that has suited the 27-year-old. She and her boyfriend wanted to "try things out" and live together before becoming more serious — a far cry from her high-school-sweetheart parents, who married right out of college. Almost all of her peers, Washington said, are living the same way, either with friends or a long-term partner.

It may be hard to find a better place for women than Howard County, but a new study of their economic status shows wide earning gaps remain between the genders. Sponsored by the county's Commission for Women, the study, which follows a broader examination of women's status done five years ago, concludes that "women in Howard County enjoy an almost unmatched status in the United States, with a high percentage of women-owned firms ... good wages, low poverty levels and many professionals.

Therese Easley fought off nine other bidders to buy her house in Sandtown last year, the first home for the 40-year-old single woman who grew up in a public housing development in East Baltimore. Ann Anderson, at 26, recently closed on her three-bedroom Federal Hill rowhouse, paying for it with 100 percent financing. And Kelly Mulligan, 29, moved into her one-bedroom condominium in Bolton Hill last month, where her mortgage is no more than the rent on her former apartment in Fells Point.

Some of the best public service ads to run during last year's election cycle were produced by a new group called Women's Voices, Women Vote. If you missed them or need a refresher, the best ad featured a series of cameos by women - famous, beautiful actresses like Rosario Dawson, Angie Harmon and Felicity Huffman - talking directly to the camera in sultry tones about their "first time." Despite the teasing innuendo, the women were talking about their first time voting. Yet millions of American women - specifically, unmarried women - remain electoral virgins, so to speak.

DAVID BLANKENHORN has a question: Why isn't there some debate about the fact that American sperm banks sell sperm to single women?As usual, the elite culture in America will hear this question in one way; the rest of the country will hear it differently.Elite response: Here comes another at tack on privacy and individual rights.Rest of the country: Why is it so obvious that a wide-open commercial market in the production of fatherless children is a social good?Mr. Blankenhorn is head of the Institute for American Values in Manhattan.

Before moving with her boyfriend of three years to a Hampden home this September, Brandy Washington lived with two other women, both young professionals in their 20s, just like her. Delaying marriage is a lifestyle that has suited the 27-year-old. She and her boyfriend wanted to "try things out" and live together before becoming more serious — a far cry from her high-school-sweetheart parents, who married right out of college. Almost all of her peers, Washington said, are living the same way, either with friends or a long-term partner.

The recent census finding that there are about as many single women as married women nationwide has triggered a flood of speculation about the cultural fallout from this demographic shift. But now that the single woman has officially arrived, the implications are broader than cultural. This emerging majority could have significant influence over America's political future as well. Who, exactly, is she? For starters, most unmarried women don't lead lives straight out of Sex in the City.

BOSTON -- There are times when political polling reminds me of one of Liz Carpenter's favorite stories. Back in the Carter administration when the indomitable Texan was working on women's rights, she asked a university president how his campus was broken down by sex. "Well, ma'am," he answered thoughtfully, "liquor is more of a problem." Over the years, sexual breakdowns became a regular feature in the polling firmament. The gender gap was discovered and then elevated to a truism, and finally divided into various subsets of the gene pool.