Clementine Ford slams marriage as an institution ‘built on the oppression of women’ while on The Project

An outspoken Australian feminist writer has called out marriage as “fundamentally flawed”, calling on women to “see something better for themselves” on The Project.

Controversial feminist figure Clementine Ford has described marriage as “built on the oppression of women” and compared wives to slaves in a new book.

The best-selling author, who has written three other books, appeared on The Project to outline an alternative view on marriage in her latest book I Don’t, describing how she wants women to question what they’ve been told about it.

“My biggest issue with marriage is that I think that it’s fundamentally flawed institution that is built on the oppression of women,” she said on the program.

Ms Ford described marriage as something that "enslaves women" in her book. Photo: The Project.

“ ... But also that it’s presented to people now as something that it never has been, which is something that we need in order to have happiness and love.

“Love marriage is only about 200 years old, so the idea that somehow marriage is an essential thing that will elevate our life to something better is historically wrong and I think that we would be much better as people focusing on how to make ourselves happy.”

She went on to say that marriage was largely “great for men” while women were left with a large burden inside of the relationship.

“One of the chief complaints a lot of women have about their husbands is that they don’t really feel like their husbands see them, all they are is kind of like a glorified all-in-one appliance for them,” she said.

Ms Ford said she was “not at all against people falling in love and forming families”, but urged people to consider whether they needed to get married in order to have significant relationships.

Waleed Aly questioned Ms Ford's proposal while Sarah Harris laughed at her answers.

“If you have essentially all the same legal rights in a de facto relationship as you would in a marriage, what is the marriage and the piece of government paper giving you that relationship doesn’t?” she asked.

Host Waleed Aly then pointed out to Ms Ford that the dynamics of de facto relationships are often similar to marriages, posing the question to her that marriage may not be the issue after all.

“It’s a good question Waleed, well maybe the plan is to go for de facto relationships next,” she said.

“My goal is to really get women to see something bigger and better for themselves than just being someone’s partner or wife.”