Why Single Women Frighten the Hell out of the GOP

Rebecca Traister's new book on single women looks at how this growing population is reshaping America.

By Amanda Marcotte / Salon

Author Rebecca Traister’s last book, Big Girls Don’t Cry, took a comprehensive look at how the 2008 elections changed everything for American women. Now she’s back with a similarly pop music-themed title, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, an examination of the role single women have played in American culture, both in our history and in our current times.

Single women are a potent political force in a way they never have been before, making up nearly a quarter of the electorate and leaning to the left of both men and their married counterparts. This, along with a whole host of inchoate fears about what happens when women are left to their own devices without male supervision, has led to a rash of conservative pundits and politicians denouncing the ladies who aren’t married. I interviewed Traister about this moral panic over single women and what it means for the culture at large.