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Notes -
The normalization of "partner" also extends to heterosexual couples now, at least among my peers, which I find rather irritating.
Didn't it start off with heterosexual couples, though? People who were co-habiting but not married, especially if they had kids together, getting irritated about being treated as 'lesser' since they weren't married and "boyfriend/girlfriend are terms you use when you're kids, not when you're grown adults living together" and so on? Something the way Ms was adopted - if you use "partner" then that says nothing about your marital status and so you aren't being treated as in a less serious, committed relationship for lack of 'the piece of paper'.
Then using it for gay couples was more natural since they couldn't legally marry at the time, and it was a way of treating them in line with straight couples.
People have moved to using it all the time now, which was one point of contention in the "this is queer erasure" complaint post I saw elsewhere: she's her wife, not just her partner!
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Think that’s a status thing. Wife/husband mean there is someone in this world who was willing to permanently vouch for you which is offensive or lowers the status of people who no one would do that for.
I also think an early sign of the coming fertility crash was eliminating Mrs. and everyone goes with Ms. That made being married with kids as having no special status in society. Having kids is work. Taking away status of having kids took away one of the big benefits of doing that. Women probably even care more about status than men and something as simple as everyone has to call you Mrs. and being above the Ms. in the social hierarchy is big.
Also the word "woman" comes from the Old English word, wífmon. Literally, "wife man," or transliterated as, "wifely person." The word wíf denoted female, reflecting the female social role.
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Does (or did) Mrs have more status? If yes it should have survived and Miss would have been eliminated? The beauty contests are “Miss Universe/World” and I can see older women wanting longer the young/sexy status of their youth and being called Ms.
The rationale was that men get called "Mr." and that indicates nothing about their marital status, whereas women were discriminated against by means of "Are you Miss or Mrs?" So the idea was a general term equivalent to "Mr." for women.
I wasn't too keen on it, but over time I've come around because it is handy, in a work context, where you don't know if Mary Murphy is Mrs. Murphy or Miss Murphy when you're writing an official letter, so a neutral term avoids giving offence. (I tend to get official letters addressed to Mrs. My Surname, seemingly on the basis that a woman my age is surely married, but I've given up trying to get it corrected since I don't want to sound like a Dick Emery sketch).
Ironically, if you like, in previous centuries women were referred to as "Mrs." even if not married, since it was abbreviation of "Mistress" a term of respect/status for older women/women in charge of households/important or high-status women.
I can see how this is annoying.
The annoyance part is my point. It was higher status to be a wife and mother than girl boss and being called Miss was low status above a certain age. This added a lot of pressure to have children so you could take the title of Mrs. which boost the fertility rate. Being called Miss above a certain age was basically being an incel.
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