BBC today magazine thing about France and how some areas are dropping / have dropped "Mademoiselle" for women

[SardineQueen]

bbc today

Article about how parts of France are dropping Mademoiselle and just using Madame, and saying that the Germans did this years ago.

Why are people so attached to Miss and Mrs here? When there are threads saying why not have one for men and one for women people get very exercised about the idea.

As others have said, English "Miss" indicates an unmarried woman and English "Mrs" a married woman, whereas French "Mademoiselle" indicates a young woman (+/- under 25) and French "Madame" an adult woman.

I've been a Ms since my teens, am now married and still Ms Own-surname, and fully intend to be Ms until I die. I'm astonished at the number of people in my life who find this controversial. To be honest, I think it's mostly defensiveness. If you want to change the system of Miss/Mrs. then you must think there's something wrong with what they've done, and how very dare you. As it happens I do dislike the current convention but god knows I don't harangue people for their choices, that would be extremely rude - apparently just choosing differently is enough, though.

I went to France in my early twenties for about six months and most got Madame'd with the odd Mademoiselle thrown in. If people must differentiate, I much prefer it be based on age rather than marital status.

I wonder how much of a class thing there is. I was thinking about the way in Jane Austen's time, you get so much information packed into a title - so the eldest unmarried daughter is 'Miss Bennett' and the younger daughters are 'Miss Kitty' or 'Miss Lydia' - it's not just marital status but also age order (and the order in which they were supposed to marry). And whereas I think you read about women who work getting the honorary title 'Mrs' later in life, women who're upper class and don't work, seem to stay 'Miss' into old age.

Anyone know why?

I'm only wondering because one of the obvous differences between England and France is that England became industrialized in a rather different way, and perhaps the changes in women's working patterns had an effect on the way titles ended up denoting married/unmarried here and older/younger there?

I suspect the French use of "Madame" for women over 25 has got something to do with the traditional social stigma and shame attached to being an old maid.

Being never married (divorced is fine) and childless at 30 is still quite problematic for a lot of French women.

I've signed the petition. Actually just came on here to start a post about this very issue. I hate the fact that men have Mr as default, but there are 3 options for women. I think the titles can be very loaded. I use Ms (unmarried 25 year old) but I know it has negative connotations - I think some people see it as referring to a 'spinster' or someone with a chip on their shoulder. At work, I've sent letters to people addressing them as 'Ms' when it wasn't clear what their marital status was, and on a number of occasions I've had negative responses from people who want to emphasise that they are 'Mrs'. I switched to Ms when applying for jobs after uni as I worried that if I used Miss people would assume I was very young, but then Ms implies someone older, possibly with children which is also problematic for some employers. It makes me really angry that men don't have these assumptions made about them just from their titles.

How about going back to citoyen/citoyenne?

I wonder how much of a class thing there is. I was thinking about the way in Jane Austen's time, you get so much information packed into a title - so the eldest unmarried daughter is 'Miss Bennett' and the younger daughters are 'Miss Kitty' or 'Miss Lydia' - it's not just marital status but also age order (and the order in which they were supposed to marry).
It was the same for men too. The eldest son would be Mr Smith and the younger ones, Mr John Smith, Mr William Smith etc.

And whereas I think you read about women who work getting the honorary title 'Mrs' later in life, women who're upper class and don't work, seem to stay 'Miss' into old age
I think Mrs was originally given to any woman in charge of something, so an unmarried daughter in charge of the house could use Mrs. So perhaps working women could use Mrs as it denoted status. Later on, I think working women could use Mrs because it implied they were the property of a man whereas women who didn't work, didn't mix with men outside of family so didn't need protecting by the title of Mrs.

I dont know about France and Germany but I dont like the way women have to have titles.

I work in customer services and I dont add the title of female customers, I dont even ask. My boss got really arsey with me for it, I said there is no need to women to be identified by their marital status.

I still dont do it.