Sheng nu cites studies that show that women are now breaking the tradition of "mandatory marriage" to have fewer children or marry later on in life. Other typologically similar terms that are still used in the modern lexicon of other countries and cultures show the concept has existed in some cases as far back as the 16th century. The term spinster was used to describe unmarried or single women of a marriageable age. It wasn't until 2004 when the Civil Partnership Act replaced the word spinster with "single" in the relationship history section of marriage certificates in the UK. Subsequently, at the
The Spinster and Her Enemies the threat they posed to male dominance", and with exposing "enormous male opposition" to what Summerfield referred to as "gyn/affection". She wrote that while Jeffreys depicted the hold of the "ideology of compulsory heterosexuality" as absolute, further documentary evidence was needed to determine the extent to which this was true between World War I and the 1970s. Jane Egerton described "The Spinster and Her Enemies" as a major work in "The Sexual Imagination from Acker to Zola: A Feminist Companion" (1993). The feminist Rene Denfeld criticized "The Spinster and Her Enemies" for being part of a repressive, anti-sexual trend within