Written by: Ishani Kanchan, Moitrayee Das
“Are you single?”, “Do you have a special someone?”, “Where’s your other half?” All of these are questions that ‘single’ people all around the world get asked regularly. But what does it mean to be single in Indian society? According to Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani on McGraw’s podcast, when one talks about someone being single in India, one means to say that they’re unmarried. Dr. Chowkhani states that coupledom and cohabitation can be seen in the country, prominently in urban India. But for the most part, even though dating is empirically present in the country, it’s not socially acceptable (McGraw, 2023).
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Society plays a major role in dictating how one should live their lives. One way it does this is by imposing timelines on ‘the right age to get married’ or ‘the right age to have kids,’ which creates unwanted pressure and also ignores what individuals want from their lives. This is why we see the youth pushing back against these restrictive and unnecessary timelines. In an article, Shaili Chopra mentions that India has around 72 million single women, with at least 13 million of them being single mothers heading entire households! (Chopra, 2022).
Interestingly, in Parul Bhandari’s book, ‘Dissent with Love: Ambiguity, Affect and Transformation in South Asia,’ she mentions that more often than not, individuals who choose not to marry do it because of their respect for the institution of marriage and wish to make it work, which is why they long for genuine love and intimacy. Bhandari further mentions that a major aspect of the love individuals desire is self-love — individuals are choosing to love themselves and build a strong connection with their own self before trying to do that with another human being — which is another reason why individuals are delaying marriage timelines set by society (Bhandari, 2025).
On the other hand, we can look at marriage economically– as an evaluation of costs and benefits. In a stereotypical evaluation, the husband will excel in the labor market while the wife will take care of the household, making it a mutually beneficial economic transaction (Hisam, 2025). But in a contemporary evaluation, women are excelling in the labor market as well as household management, which makes them question whether marriage is beneficial at all. The only reason to consider marriage is for companionship, and since that’s the only major benefit, why not make sure you’re getting the best of it? Even if that means waiting a few more years to get married (if you were planning on getting married in the first place, of course). As a result, single people are no longer just a statistic; they constitute a major proportion of the country’s population and, as rightly said by Chopra, are a force to be reckoned with (Chopra, 2022).
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However, we see that the stigma surrounding singlehood is gendered and heteronormative. A common perception is that men can be single and thriving, but if women are single, they are suffering and are ‘becharis’. Life as a woman in India is quite challenging and, dare I say, unsafe, even more so if you are a single, unmarried woman. Renting accommodation is accompanied by endless intrusive questions, and when they finally manage to rent a space, extra measures have to be taken to ensure safety, and even then, safety is not 100% guaranteed. That’s the life of single women in India — trying to be independent and establish their identity, but being questioned at every point in time.
This gendered stigma can be seen in other Asian countries as well. In China, there is the concept of sheng nu — simply translated as “leftover women” — which started being disseminated in the state media of China back in 2007. Women who are educated and unmarried by the age of 27 are considered ‘leftover’ and are portrayed as lonely, desperate, and intimidating (Liu & Kozinets, 2021). The term in itself tells us how society views women, objectifying them in one way or another.
These women and their families are on the receiving end of endless taunts and patronizing remarks as to how sad it is that their daughter couldn’t find someone and how miserable her single life must be. Single women all over the world are guilt-tripped and/or shamed for wanting to be single. In an article by Your Story, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu — Indian writer and leader of ‘Status Single’, a community focused on empowering single women — mentions that the moment a woman says she’s single, society takes it as an offense and accuses her of brainwashing women not to marry or be mothers and basically challenging patriarchy (Sharma, 2023).
This gendered stigma becomes even more unfavorable with the addition of intersectionalities like caste, class, religion, disability, etc. Being a single woman in India is challenging enough, and it gets more challenging if one is part of marginalized groups.
Also, there has always been a historical underpinning that a woman is weak and nothing without a man, which is troublesome not only because it doesn’t acknowledge women as human beings of their own merit but also because it assumes that heterosexuality is the only form of existence.
Nevertheless, we do see single women fighting against stigma — the so-called ‘leftover women’ in China are fighting using economic power and consumerism to their advantage by showing their nagging relatives that they’re capable of living a great and glamorous life without a husband (Liu & Kozinets, 2021). In India, Status Single, a women-led Facebook community, aims at building a conducive world for single women through deep conversations about challenges, job opportunities, and legal assistance (Sharma, 2023).
However, as stated by Kundu in McGraw’s podcast, it is important to acknowledge that single men have similar stereotypes attached to them — “He must not be decent,” “He must party a lot” — and this is important because only single women fighting back against and unlearning patriarchy isn’t enough; uprooting patriarchy should be a united effort (McGraw, 2023).
So, in the end, the question we need to ask is, is the stigma around singlehood changing in contemporary times? Are we okay with seeing people as more than their relationship status? Are we okay with women decentering men in a patriarchal society and choosing to live their lives to the fullest? Are we okay with progressing towards a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society, or would we rather regress to the olden times?
References
Bhandari, P. (2025, March 5). A new book examines urban India’s changing attitudes to marriage and the reasons for this. Scroll.in. https://scroll.in/article/1079693/a-new-book-examines-urban-indias-changing-attitudes-to-marriage-and-the-reasons-for-this
Chopra, S. (2022, January 15). India’s Single Women. The Globalist. https://www.theglobalist.com/indias-single-women/
Hisam, K. (2025, March 7). Pakistan: Single women disrupt marriage market dynamics. Scroll.in. https://scroll.in/article/1079837/pakistan-single-women-disrupt-marriage-market-dynamics
Liu, C.-L., & Kozinets, R. (2021, November 12). How China’s “leftover women” are using their financial power to fight the stigma of being single. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-chinas-leftover-women-are-using-their-financial-power-to-fight-the-stigma-of-being-single-171698
McGraw, P. (Host). (2023, August 03). The Truth About Single Women In India (#178) [Audio Podcast Episode]. In Solo – The Single Person’s Guide To A Remarkable Life. Peter McGraw. https://petermcgraw.org/the-truth-about-single-women-in-india
Sharma, S. (2023, March). Here’s a community that is breaking stereotypes on single women. Yourstory.com; YourStory. https://yourstory.com/herstory/2023/02/community-status-single-empowering-single-women-india
Ishani Kanchan is an undergraduate student at FLAME University, Pune. Moitrayee Das is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at FLAME University, Pune.