French scientist calls for the abolition of marriage

As long as there is marriage, women will lose out. The French political scientist Emilia Roig considers marriage an utterly outdated role model and calls for its demise in her new book “The End of Marriage”.

“With the end of marriage, I am calling for the end of an obsolete institution that produces and perpetuates the inequality and oppression of women in our society,” says Emilia Roig to the Norddeutscher Rundfunk. “Marriage is one of the important pillars of patriarchy. And marriage is not just a piece of paper at the registry office; it is an entirely political, and economic system. The state also has an interest in our relationships.”

According to Roig, the origin of marriage was meant to enslave women and be an invention of men. “Of course, males wanted their wives’ bodies for reproduction, but also their labour force.”

For herself, Emilia Roig has long since abolished marriage. She is divorced and has been researching feminism and equality for years. Her conclusion: Women lose out as long as there is marriage.

Roig does not believe in women’s enthusiasm for getting married. “There’s a hip picture of marriage now - with lots of Instagram pages and Pinterest where you can have a nice hip wedding too; and then there is the impression that the institution is not at all the same as the institution was 40 or 50 years ago.” That is a fallacy, according to her. At the end of March, Roig’s book “The End of Marriage” will be published, in which she goes into more detail about her demands and theses.