“The assumption is that you can drop everything or that you don’t have a care in the world,” says Chaka. “Actually, as a single, life is more expensive, you have to run all errands yourself and you don’t have someone to fall back on financially if things go wrong.”

While it’s tricky to nail down concrete statistics that prove how much singles might be being indirectly penalised in the workplace, a recent UK study of 25,000 workers found that two thirds of childless women aged 28 to 40 felt that they were expected to work longer hours. Growing numbers of workers, academics and analysts are documenting the issue.

Corporate workhorses

During research for his book Going Solo, Eric Klinenberg, a professor of sociology at New York University interviewed hundreds of single people in Europe and America and discovered “there was widespread perception that singles became the workhorses in corporate offices”.

“I met countless workers who complained that their managers viewed them as always available for late night and weekend assignments, because they didn't have children or spouses,” he says.

“In a few cases, I met women who said that they had been denied raises that they deserved, because their managers believed that they didn't need the extra money as much as colleagues with children,” adds the author.

Bella DePaulo, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explores the phenomenon in her books and studies, and coined the word “singlism” to pin down the stigmatisation, negative stereotyping and discrimination against singles that she believes is widespread in the workplace and society at large. She argues that many employers are missing a trick when it comes to single employees, who, far from being lonely and isolated, are actually more likely to be actively engaged in their communities and have strong relationships with friends who “feel like family, even if they are not family in the traditional sense”.