"Why Aren't You Married Yet?": Experience and Expressions of Identity and Agency of Never-Married Single Women in Urban Sri Lanka (original) (raw)

Marriage and motherhood are highly valorised and considered axiomatic, sacred and as defining womanhood within the Sri Lankan socio-cultural context. This often leaves women staying single beyond the normative age of marriage being stigmatized, questioned and called to account for their single status. Research suggests that a growing number of Sri Lankan women are choosing to either delay marriage or remain unmarried. Singleness of women however is commonly perceived as more prevalent in the urban context due to socio-economic and cultural changes associated with modernization. Two issues that arise in this respect are explored in this research: how do single women in urban Sri Lanka who have never been married experience and negotiate their identities of singleness? and what role does agency play in their narratives as they account for being single? Viewing singleness as a discursively constructed social category, an attempt is made to understand how single women draw from and respond to historical and cultural constructions of singleness through discourse or ‘talk’, in order to make meaning of their singleness to both themselves and others. For this purpose, the narratives generated through in-depth interviews with fifteen never-married single women from the urban city of Colombo in Sri Lanka have been analyzed using the theoretical framework of Critical Discursive Psychological Analysis (CDPA). Deploying its three analytical concepts of interpretive repertoires, subject positions and ideological dilemmas, the study illustrates how single women in urban Sri Lanka oscillate between positive and negative repertoires, or culturally available ‘ways of talking’ about singleness, in negotiating their single identities while engaging in a debate between ‘choice’ and ‘chance’ in explaining the reasons for being single. While single women employ various discursive strategies to construct a more positive identity of singleness, defend their single status and deal with the contradictions arising from polarized identities of singleness, their expressions of agency denote their interest in presenting themselves as women with choice and control over their lives. The study demonstrates that while they engage in a paradoxical act of resisting and reproducing traditional gender norms and cultural convention, single women in urban Sri Lanka use discourse effectively to represent a positive and agentic single self. Taking this to be indicative of a transformation in the discursive terrain of singleness in Sri Lanka, the study suggests that the expressions of identity and agency of single women are emerging forms of resistance to the hegemonic cultural ideology of marriage, family and motherhood. Key words: singleness, single women, Sri Lanka, gender, identity, agency, discourse, critical discursive psychological analysis (CDPA), interpretive repertoire, subject position, ideological dilemma, discursive strategy