I was intrigued by this article by David Allen Green on marriage. I happen to agree with Mr. Green on this: marriage is a legal and economic contract and love and romance only get in the way of that. Far too many people say “I do” without really understanding the legal and financial implications. Yet, when I once casually inquired of my solicitor what those implications were, he looked at me like I’d grown a second head.
Historically, marriage has been an extremely important social and economic institution, and one that has had an enormous impact on the social status of women. So I’d like to have a look today at marriage through the ages within the Western/Judeo-Christian context.
Marriage as a legal and economic contract:
I feel like stating the obvious here, but it is surprising how many people don’t realise the full legal and financial implications, and the simple fact that marriage is, above all, a legal and economic contract. Even some of our most “romantic” customs today have evolved from economic necessity. Engagement rings, for instance, date back to Germanic tribes, where they were a downpayment on the bride price the groom paid the bride’s family. Another good example is how marriage custom changes with economic conditions. Early Jewish law as captured in Deuteronomy makes levirate marriage (where a brother has to marry his deceased brother’s widow) compulsory, while later writers (Leviticus) prohibit it.
For the majority of our history, marriage has been a way of regulating property rights, over money, land, but also children. Modern tendencies to grant custody of children to the mother are actually an innovation – historically custody defaulted to the father. This also explains the historical importance placed on a bride’s virginity, as it provided a measure of certainty of paternity.
Hendrik Hartog points us to the concept of “coverture” – the idea that in legal terms a husband spoke for his wife who couldn’t, for instance, own property in her own right. This arrangement makes marriage through the ages unequal by definition. Only in the last couple of hundred years have we moved, slowly, towards an understanding of marriage as a contract between legal equals.
The rise of romantic love in marriage:
The ideas of love and marriage were for a very long time seen as incompatible. Through the middle ages in Europe, marriages tended to be arranged by families, often without even a meeting between the bride and groom before the wedding. A good illustration of the emergence of romantic love is Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur – a 15th-century retelling of older English and French tales about, among others, King Arthur. The book includes both the story of the love triangle between King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, and the much older tale of Tristan and Isolde.
Superficially, the stories are similar: queen falls in love with knight who is not her husband. The main difference, which hints at the difference in period of origin, is that there is no meaningful relationship at all between Isolde and her husband King Mark. Guinevere, on the other hand, genuinely loves both Arthur and Lancelot.
While even into last century marriage was the only legal expression of sexuality, there have been periods, notably the 12th century, when a strong belief was held that love was impossible in marriage and could only be found in adultery. The idea that love and marriage actually go together is much more recent.
Hartog argues (in a US context which, however, is largely also reapplicable to Western Europe) that over the last 200 years we have seen the gradual evolution of marriage into an expression of an individual’s right to happiness.
Divorce:
When researching this post, one of the things I found most surprising was the varied history of divorce. I expected that divorce wouldn’t really come onto the scene until the 20th century (unless of course you were Henry VIII). And while in many cultures – for instance ancient Israel – divorce was frowned upon or prohibited, it was quite common for the Romans. There were even periods in Roman history when husband and wife could divorce by mutual agreement – something which has yet to return to all of Europe. In the post-Roman period and early middle ages, marriage was often still seen as a civil legal contract. It was not until the 12th century that the Christian church began to extend its influence and marriage became a sacrament. It was due to these changes that marriage was declared insoluble except by death. Combined with other factors like coverture, this pretty much put women under mens’ control for their entire lives.
It is only with the recent reframing of marriage as an expression of the right to happiness and as a contract between two equals that divorce has really started being relevant again, and that we have made any progress in divorce legislation. Initial progress was the legalisation of divorce when one party was at fault, e.g. through infidelity or other acts deemed “incompatible with the marriage”. No-fault divorce is still not available in many countries around the world. Even in the US, it was not available in the state of New York until 2010.
Same-sex marriage:
Strangely enough, it is only when we start looking at same-sex marriage that the oppressive effects of historical, “traditional” marriage on women become really apparent. I was struck by a recent post on Conservative Home which claimed the Britain has the most “anti-family” tax system in Europe. When you look at how this is calculated, it becomes apparent that the implied Conservative definition of “family” is a unit of one man who goes out to work, one woman who stays at home and two kids. When traditional, segregated gender roles are so deeply embedded in your world view it is not surprising that [c/C]onservatives find it difficult to deal with families where both partners are of the same sex. Ask any gay couple and they will tell you of the countless times someone has asked them “So which one of you is the man and which the woman?” It is this expectation of gender roles which is damaging to women and LGBT people alike. For a slightly satirical but ultimately very down-to-earth look at gender roles and same-sex marriage, I highly recommend Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective.
The LGBT community has had an inconsistent history when it comes to marriage. Historically, some LGBT people have rejected marriage as an institution, due to the history of oppression it comes with. More recently, marriage equality campaigns have been successful around the world. One of my favourite stats is that until about six months ago there were more countries in the world who executed people for being gay than countries which permitted same-sex marriage. I am incredibly pleased that this has now changed. Ten countries and a few other jurisdictions, including several US states and the Native American Coquille Nation, currently permit same-sex marriage, with several others recognising marriages performed in other countries or having other forms of same-sex civil unions.
Cohabitation:
Finally, here we are in the 21st century, and while a lot of people still get married – some even to people of their own sex – and some get divorced, a lot of us choose to simply cohabit. If marriage is not about “ownership” of property or children anymore, if it is no longer the only legally sanctioned form of sexual expression, a lot of people simply no longer see a point in it.
Of course, there is still a point. Being recognised as husband and wife or as civil partners by the state confers a whole lot of rights and obligations on you. I am reliably told that the UK Civil Partnership Act was one of the most complex pieces of UK legislation: as the intention was to make civil partnerships equal to marriage, all of the same legal rights, privileges and obligations has to be included – apparently right down to changes in the Abattoirs Act.
Things like being allowed to visit your partner in hospital and make decisions for them if they are incapable of doing so themselves can be hugely important. In case of separation, figuring out how to split property can be a challenge, whether you are married or not, but unmarried women tend to suffer disproportionately financially at the end of a relationship. Every few years someone comes up with the idea that cohabiting couples should be given some rights.
I must admit I am ambivalent about this. We’ve already established that the smart thing to do would be to take independent legal advice before you get married. I don’t particularly want to have to do that before I move in with someone too. As it is, the state already treats my partner and me as married for benefits purposes, so even though he is currently looking for a job, he is not receiving any job seekers’ allowance or any other benefits. I am expected to support him, pretty much regardless of how long we’ve been together for, what the nature of our relationship is, or how long ago we moved in together.
Marriage through the ages is a highly complex subject, and this post has barely scratched the surface. What I hope it has shown is that women have only recently become equal partners in this institution, that the current arrangements around the world vary wildly, especially when it comes to provisions for divorce and same-sex marriage, and that cohabitation, too, comes with its own set of thorny issues. Food for thought as we near the end of Women’s History Month.

As a geek, Bletchley Park is one of my favourite places in the world. Today, it houses the National Museum of Computing as well as the National Codes Centre. During World War II, this top secret location was the main code-breaking site in the UK, intercepting and decoding German messages.
Bletchley often features in LGBT history as the place of work of mathematician and computing pioneer Alan Turing, who as well as being a genius was also gay and was tragically hounded to death by the state because of it. It was only in 2009 that the UK government officially apologised for the state’s actions in this matter.
What is less well known about Bletchley Park (or Station X, as it was known during the war) is that the vast majority of the 12,000 people stationed there over the course of the war (around 80%!) were women. While the senior officers and most of the mathematicians and cryptographers were men, there was a lot of manual clerical work and machine operation to be done which was performed by women. Anything from transcribing coded messages to operating Turing’s Bombe machines for decoding Enigma messages – one of the most demanding jobs on site – was done by women.
One of the ways in which women were recruited to Station X was through Times Crossword competitions. You needed people with good general knowledge, outstanding analytical and problem solving skills, and ability to work under pressure. What better way to find them than to set a challenge to solve the Times Crossword in under 12 minutes? Those who did were offered a position at Bletchley Park – and those reluctant to take it up were offered the most ghastly alternatives available, providing a good incentive to move to the relative peace and quiet of the countryside.
At its peak, there were 9,000 people stationed at Bletchley Park in January 1945, all of whom needed to stay in touch with their families. The quiet town of Bletchley couldn’t be seen to attract attention through vast quantities of post, so up to four separate addresses were set up, all of which redirected to the secret Bletchley Park post office. There was a limit on the number of letters the women could send and receive each week, and the arrival of post from their families had an appreciable effect on the women’s morale.
Women’s contributions to the war effort at Bletchley Park were not something I was aware of until I visited there a few months ago. It is definitely something that deserves a lot more attention than it gets, and therefore a perfect topic for Women’s History Month.

Earlier this week, I received my 2011 UK Census form. There are a number of things that are wrong with it. Top of the list, of course, is that it’s being administered by a US arms manufacturer which among other things raises significant questions about confidentiality. The way some of the questions are asked, as well as the questions which are omitted, are also problematic. “What is your sex?” with the options “Male” and “Female” leaves thousands of transgender and intersex people unrepresented and unaccounted for. The fact that we are still not asking about sexual orientation, despite “Civil Partnership” being one of the marital statuses available on the questionnaire, is inexcusable. While Civil Partnerships will give you a very rough idea that gay people exist in the country, not all gay people will be the marrying kind, and to top it off those of us who are bisexual are completely invisible. “Gypsy and Irish Traveller” is presented as a single ethnic sub-group under “White” – putting the census on the same level as Channel 4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding when it comes to understanding of ethnic groups. Personally, I also had some fun with the questions about national identity (European) and language (English is both my third and my main language at the moment).
My own gripes with the census aside, there have been a few census-related political campaigns recently. They range from the sublimely hilarious suggestion on how to answer Question 17, to calls to boycott the census, to the BHA’s campaign to get people to make a distinction between belonging to a cultural tradition related to a religion, and being genuinely religious. So what does all of this have to do with Women’s History Month?
This is not the first time the census has been used for political campaigning. There are at least two prominent cases of the Women’s Suffrage movement using the 1911 census as a campaign tool. This Times article from 1911 documents Suffragists’ efforts to evade the census, while this 2009 article reveals the extent of the campaign, evident from the 1911 census data released in 2009. Women spoiled their census forms, for instance by writing “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper.” They had a point.
One woman truly stands out in this. Emily Davison is better known for giving her life for the cause of Women’s Suffrage by jumping in front of the King’s Horse at Epsom. 2 years earlier, however, she spent a night hiding in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons so that she could register that as her residence on the day of the census.
The census is an extremely powerful tool. Census data is used to allocate funding for public services, to understand current demographics and trends, to help us build a picture of who we are as a society. Completing the census or otherwise is a political act, and an act of self-expression. The Women’s Suffrage movement knew this, and clearly a lot of people today know it. Moreover, 2011 may be your last opportunity to perform this particular political act. Relish it!