How Single Women Are 'Raising The Bar On Men's Behavior'

On last week's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," journalist and All the Single Ladies author Rebecca Traister sat down with the host to explain how empowered single American women are becoming. But, Traister explained, beyond claiming their own economic, sexual and social freedom, single women are also a driving force behind men getting their sh*t together.

Traister and Maher discussed the societal shift towards singledom. Over the last few decades, Traister explains, marriage has changed from a necessary next step for young women to a choice that they are making later in their lives. This shift, said Traister, "raises the bar on relationships, and it raises the bar on men's behavior."

Traister noted that "even for those [women] who are marrying, they're doing it later and spending more years of their adulthood outside of this institution that historically really confined them."

Beyond the rising bar for personal romantic relationships between men and women, the "rise of the single woman" also plays a major role in the political landscape -- a landscape that is heavily represented by men.

Traister tells Maher that single women were the "key voting block" in the 2012 election, and continue to be a majorly influential group of voters. As such a strong voice in the political arena, single women as a population are demanding that the government take as much responsibility for issues that affect women's empowerment and equality as it has in protecting the empowerment of white men.

"It is the government's job to support [single women] more, as the government has supported white men throughout our entire history," she said, before continuing with this glorious truth bomb:

The government enfranchised white men, at the founding, while disenfranchising people of color and women. The government has built infrastructure that supported business that were owned by white men who profited. The government -- by not protecting wage equality, by not offering paid leave -- has depressed women's ability to participate in the workforce, and compete against for the money and the power, and has left them as this population that needs to do the domestic work.

Watch the full video here.