Will Single Women Transform America?

In her book, All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister traces the long history of marriage and its varied purposes in the United States. She also argues that the unprecedented rise in independent, unmarried women demands shifts in power dynamics and policy. It’s completely revolutionary, Traister explains in this animated interview, for more young women to be unmarried than not. In the 1800s, Susan B. Anthony wrote: “In women's transition from subject to sovereign, there must needs be an era of self-sustained, self-supported homes.” Traister says that her prediction was correct, and that this has led to what Anthony once described as an "epoch of single women" in America.