Silence of singlehood: an autoethnographic account of a PhD student

Purpose Through my autoethnographic account, I aim to explain how and why women's various social and cultural encounters shape singlehood. Through autoethnographic tales, I narrate the experiences of a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) student as they navigate polarizing professional and cultural expectations and confront academic loneliness. Design/methodology/approach Autoethnography is a unique method of systematically analyzing one's perspective to understand a cultural experience. In an autoethnography, the researcher continuously switches between the researcher and the researched to provide reflexive insights into the cultural and social experiences of the field. Findings Lack of social support, loneliness at work, the stigma associated with singlehood, and current social practices and policies have led me to define singlehood in my own terms. Women constantly face the social and cultural pressure of “having it all,” and alternative life choices such as singlehood can lead women to be stigmatized and isolated. Originality/value Subjective accounts provide detailed longitudinal data of the singlehood journey. Layered accounts of my singlehood experience can create an image of how multiple intersectional identities, such as age, gender and cultural identities, shape the identity of single women in Academia. It is the multiple subliminal messages around single women that shape the experience as lonely and deeply difficult to navigate. To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the few papers dedicated to understanding women's views of singlehood identity in an academic context in the Indian subcontinent.