In Being Single in the City: Cultural Geographies of Gendered Urban Space in Asia edited by Christiane Brosius, Jeroen de Kloet, Laila Abu-Er-Rub and Melissa Butcher (published by Heidelberg University in 2024), being single is posited as a subjective identity, beyond the mere binaries of having a partner or not. The book consists of nine skilfully crafted chapters, each reflective of the authors’ diverse narratives, where the singleness of women is studied as arising out of both voluntary and involuntary situations and also relating to both temporary and long-term lifestyles. The growth of cities opens up new workspaces thus leading to the growth of the single, independent woman as a social category. In this context, the book focuses on studying urban spaces in relation to single women and seeks to understand how they navigate the city, particularly in Asian cities of China and India.

The book begins with Kinneret Lahad’s chapter that explores the concept of China’s “leftover women” categorising women as a surplus citizen who are a disruptive force and a threat to society in general. Single women are termed as “spoiled, choosing to live a pampered life at home with their parents”, “too selective” and often criticised for “overconsumption of shoes and handbags” and thus perceived as a threat to the acceptable norms of female respectability and social stability (p 49-51). Thus, singlehood as put forward is more about societal perceptions than the status of women themselves. The chapter by Penn Tsz Ting Ip and Jeron de Kloet focuses on the lives of Shanghai’s domestic helpers whom they term as “working single” irrespective of their marital status because of the nature of their isolated work environment inside the four walls of an urban household. As “working single” in the city, these women take up the care labour outsourced to them by the city dwellers but their children, referred to as “left-behind-children” are cared for by grandparents in rural China (p 110). Thus, the care labour of the domestic helpers comes at the cost of care towards their children highlighting the social inequality in the care economy. Chenying Pi’s chapter questions the universality of marriage and argues that in changing urban landscapes, where women face the double burden of family and career, single professional women now aspire to find someone progressive enough to accommodate modern independent femininity. Yin Shan Lo and Yiu Fai Chow in their chapter present the works of Chinese artist Guo Qingling through an interview whose paintings depict the complexities of the female subject with intersections of class and urbanity. Lucetta Kam talks about queer single women from China, Australia and Hong Kong whose experiences are fundamentally different from heterosexual single women. For them, mobility is an important prerequisite to be single and lead a life without the scrutinising gaze of society but their mobility often results in the loss of family support.

The chapters focusing on Indian cities consist of Lucie Bernroider’s study of female singleness in Delhi through an autoethnographic perspective reflecting how such studies with the core methodology of participant observation method require the proximity and privilege of being accepted as a researcher. Shilpa Phadke’s chapter reveals interesting perspectives on how unmarried women are often infantilized even though they shoulder all familial responsibilities as compared to their married counterparts. Often mothers of educated daughters who dare to ask uncomfortable questions around the “marriage talk” have to face even more pressure and social disapproval.  Paromita Chakravarti’s essay constructs single women’s lives in the spatial organisation of working women’s hostels in Kolkata. Hostels provide a safe space of autonomy to single women navigating the city for studies, careers etc on their own. But societal standards of respectability require women to have a home as a mark of domesticity and familial identity and a hostel is only a thikana (address)that does not necessarily guaranteethe respect a home acquired through marriage brings into women’s lives. The last chapter by Sanjay Srivastava presents the discourses on how technology becomes a solution to social problems of gendered urban spaces and can be used by women to mark out safe and dangerous spaces thus pointing out urban spatial changes with economic development.

The book is an apt commentary on the gendered aspect of being single because women being single does not fit well in heteronormative family structures and is seen as an exercise of women’s agency and power. Access to urban infrastructure plays an important role in ensuring women’s autonomy. However, unlike the West, in many Asian cities urban infrastructure for singles is poorly developed (p 19). Thus, in these cities, the body of the urban single woman is deemed to be a possible threat in particular spaces at particular times. The discussions rightly present a rich intersectional perspective for studying singlehood and provide the ground for reimagining single women in the city in the context of changing social realities.

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Smita Choudhury is a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati and teaches Economics at Nalbari Commerce College, Assam.