Spinsters and bachelors

I readily admit that I sometimes raise objections to things in articles that others don't find troublesome, and I also admit that sometimes I'm wrong. I'm curious to know what you readers think of the following:

Tonight I read a story about Cowboy Bob, a bearded bank robber who turned out to be a woman in disguise. Just a few graphs into the story the reporter referred to her as "a 60-year-old spinster from Garland who lived most of her life with her mother."

Why, I ask, do we refer to her as a spinster? How is her marital history germane to the story? Would we have bothered to mention it so early in the article if the subject were a man? I don't think we would have; we'd probably have left it at "lived most of his life with his mother." I don't see why we so often make an exception for women.

I wonder if I'm alone in thinking "spinster" has negative connotations that are absent from the male equivalent, "bachelor." The dictionary that I and most other copy editors use doesn't back up this opinion, but when I hear "spinster," I think of a pathetically unloved and unlovable woman. "Bachelor," on the other hand, connotes a condition primarily of choice and one that's generally not shameful. If you're a bachelor, you've embraced your freedom; if you're a spinster, you've missed the boat. Why don't we have a word like "bachelor" for unmarried women? Am I seeing a linguistic injustice that doesn't exist?

I must come back to my earlier point. Would the fact that Cowboy Bob's never been married get early mention in an analysis of a male criminal, or is this just another example of the quiet way journalists can perpetuate gender stereotypes? I'm sure the reporter was just trying to paint a vivid picture of this fascinating bank robber, but I think we need to be aware that the words we use have a subtle power. Examples of this pop up in newspapers and other media all the time. We see "working mother" frequently but rarely "working father." (Incidentally, that phrase angers me on another level. What mother, regardless of whether she toils in the home or in the general labor pool, isn't a working mother? "Full-time mother" really gets my goat, too. What, if she splits her time between the home and the office she's merely a part-time mom? I don't think so, my friends. And again, we don't make that distinction with fathers.)

I don't think the loaded language is unidirectional, by the way. I'm sure we do plenty to perpetuate male stereotypes, too. And I'm not advocating across-the-board bland, gender-neutral language in the stories we publish. But I do think we need to be more aware that the words we use, the words we publish every day shape people's perceptions.