Arguments about Angela Rayner’s sale of her council house 10 years ago have been largely initiated by men giving their opinion on what her, and by implication all women’s, ‘main’ residence should be.
For them, the amount of time a woman spends in her husband’s home is the indicator of whether it is her main residence. Whether this is correct in law may become clearer in the coming weeks, but such assumptions reflect a very male centric, and misogynistic, understanding of marriage and a woman’s role in it.
Marital expectations
Expectations about marriage are rarely now articulated. In the past they mostly centred on the couple living together, a sexually exclusive relationship, bringing up children together and sex on at least one occasion to consummate the marriage. Men were expected to financially support their wives and families, and keep physical chastisement within reasonable limits, the ‘rule of thumb’.
Women were expected to submit to sex with their husband whenever he desired (the law that rape did not exist within marriage was not changed until 1992) and to keep house. Heterosexual sex roles differentiated the relationship from other household relationships.
The women’s movement, no-fault divorce, and gay relationships have shifted some of society’s patriarchal expectations. Although there is still an expectation of a sexual or romantic relationship – ‘you may now kiss the bride’ remains part of the wedding ceremony – and people who live together in a non-sexual way, as friends, relatives, or carers are not and cannot be ‘married’.
However, a married couple can live together or separately, have sexual relations with other people and each other or not, have children or not, arrange their own finances, divvy up domestic chores, share childcare, and generally spend time together or apart as they choose or are able to negotiate. As a married couple they may have some rights and responsibilities (parental, inheritance, tax) but these do not dictate how they live in the married state.
While couples are free to create their own rules for living, gendered expectations still weigh heavily. Women still do most of the domestic chores and childcare, and are at greatest risk from domestic abuse. Many women become trapped in domestic drudgery once children are born and their career and economic potential shrinks.
Marriage and divorce
The ending of at least one long-term, living together relationship is the norm in the UK and 41 per cent of married couples get divorced before their 25th wedding anniversary. Most people who end a relationship will form a new one at some point and will remarry or cohabit again. Their experience of the first relationship, and their circumstances at the time of the second, will influence how they approach the new relationship.
Women are much more likely than their male partners to initiate a divorce. They are also less likely to marry again and are much slower to do so. Most men remarry within three years of divorce or bereavement. Marriage suits men. It is better for their health and happiness and their finances too, even with a non-working wife.
Married women, on the other hand, fare less well on all three counts. Many are impoverished after divorce. An (American) study by Michael Rosenfield, found that these gender differentials were less prevalent in non-married heterosexual couples and concluded that it is marriage and all its expectations that women struggle with and find oppressive.
A home (and income) of one’s own
So many women take steps to insure themselves against the consequences of a relationship breakdown by having a separate bank account and savings, a pre-nuptial agreement, continuing in employment and pension saving – and by keeping their pre-relationship home, at least until they have an equal share in a new jointly owned and registered property.
Even the Department of Work and Pensions, which is always looking to check if a woman claimant is being supported (or, in their view, should be) by a man, no longer determines that a woman’s main residence is evidenced by the number of times a week a sexual partner spends the night with her, but whether each has rent/mortgage, community charge and fuel bills to pay.
For many women, their ‘main’ residence will be, or they may choose it to be, the place they own, paid for with their earnings and where they lived independently prior to the relationship; fully in control of their lives and finances.
Women need, as Virginia Woolf put it in A Room of One’s Own, a door with a ‘lock and a key’. Being present in a husband’s home may be indicative of marital harmony, but it may also be due to a high marital labour workload (sexual, familial and/or domestic).
In discussing Angela Rayner’s housing arrangements, male commentators presume to know the details of her family and marital relationships. The assumption that time spent in a husband’s home makes it also the woman’s ‘home’ says more about their views of acceptable female and ‘wifely’ behaviour than about the truth of the situation. It is for Rayner, and Rayner alone, to determine which is her main residence.
