T H E DA I LY TA R G U M
BOOK: Authors say being single affects business world continued from front those students interested in policymaking to consider whether the government’s approaches toward single people are discriminator y, such the marriage benefit on income tax. “There are lots of government policies people don’t know about that favor married people over single people,” Bell said. Being single may also be detrimental in the business world, Yans said. “I believe that corporation favors married persons over single persons, and that’s discriminator y,” she said. “In fact, if there are more and more single people who are not enjoying family status — that kind of policy is highly discriminator y.” Looking to change public policy was not the professors’ only motivation behind performing research on singleness. “The scholarly implications of the work are to sharply move historians and literar y critics in the direction of seeing single women positively, as having chosen their singleness or doing ver y well at making the best of it,” Bell said. The benefits of being single are often overlooked, he said. “Many people may be aware of studies done by sociologists saying “Being a that married single woman people are generally hapis always seen pier while sinas a struggle.” gle people suffer from SAMIRA PAYDAR depression School of Arts and and health Sciences Sophomore issues,” Bell said. “We were looking to take a more positive view on singleness.” The work also aims to empower women specifically by exposing and contradicting popular stereotypes about single women, particularly single unwed mothers, who Bell said are looked at as morally inferior. School of Arts and Sciences first-year student Shantae Bedassie is familiar with such stereotypes but does not subscribe to them. “They’re on welfare, uneducated and have a lot of children from different fathers that they can’t care for,” she said, recalling stereotypes about single moms. “I don’t believe these stereotypes are true because, growing up, my mother was single and she raised me and my younger brother alone, and I ended up here.” Samira Paydar, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, said single women are oftentimes seen as incomplete, but this is not the truth. “Being a single woman is always seen as a struggle, but she is completely capable of working by herself,” she said. “She doesn’t need a man.” The professors hope the book, which was printed in paperback in July, will bring their studies to prominence at the University and beyond. “That’s why they put it on paperback,” Yans said. “It’s a hot, new topic and a hot, new subject matter. It’s topical.” The professors also founded a website that Yans described as an interactive bibliography of major works on singleness.
U NIVERSITY
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
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