I’ve been doing my bit to promote the Good Funeral Guide (all the while thinking that, really, if it’s any good, it’ll do that for itself). If I send a press release to a local radio station, chances are they’ll interview me. I go and sit in front of a mike and answer predictable questions: ‘Can you bury someone in your back garden? Really??!!’ ‘Hey, what’s the most wacky funeral you’ve ever been to? What’s the shockingest song anyone’s ever played?’ It doesn’t take us very far and it doesn’t do grievers any good. The media increasingly promotes the idea that death is heck of a lot of fun so long as you keep the dress code bright, get the playlist right, select one of those nice new mothwing coffins and have a hell of a party afterwards (there’s particularly blithering example here). I’m tired of rebutting this redefinition of the funeral as a grief bypass procedure. What’s more, it’s not what radio stations want to hear.
But it occurred to me while listening to Woman’s Hour on my talking wireless the other day that here is a programme which deals with serious things seriously. And even though my publishers have already pitched at the programme (twice, actually) and been turned down like a bedspread, I felt that this was a programme that really ought to talk about present-day trends in funerals, and I resolved to have another crack at them. And I decided that the angle I would take is that funerals are increasingly influenced by women.
Does that idea stand up? Starting with a distantly remembered (and implausible) statistic that two-thirds of funerals are arranged by women, I tried to track down the source. I found something in America: “When it comes to funerals, women do most of the funeral arrangements and planning. Nearly two thirds of the estimated 2.3 million deaths will be planned, arranged and ultimately paid for by women, most often because she is the surviving member of the marriage.” [Source]
What’s more, there has been a huge increase in the number of women working in the funeral industry. Women probably now outnumber men, for all that many women still occupy lowly positions. Women are drawn to funeral service. As David Barrington reminded me, they are increasingly drawn to embalming. Have they, together, been a feminising influence?
The burgeoning number of secular celebrants is made up mostly of women. Are they a feminising influence?
I rang a few funeral directors and put it to them. They all reckoned that the two-thirds figure is way out, it’s more like 50:50. It is difficult to generalise from their other responses; a bigger sample would have been more useful. I am hoping you will be part of that bigger sample, dear reader.
If I am to generalise, male funeral directors tend to feel that men have as much say as their womenfolk, while female funeral directors tend to feel that, once they get the bit between their teeth, women take the lead. That makes sense, yes? Without getting overly embroiled in gender politics, women make better shoppers?
One curious fact: Britain offers funeral consumers a bigger range of coffins than anywhere else on Earth. How do we account for that?
All agreed that women tend to take the lead in designing the service sheet, choosing the dress code, picking the flowers. As a celebrant I know that, while men and women will decide on the music equally, poetry is much more likely to be chosen by females. I also know that it’s much easier to create a ceremony in the company of women than men.
Here’s another dangerous generalisation. Women are much more interested than men in wedding planning.
Could funerals go the same way?