Tag Archives: women

Posted on by

Aw, you shouldn’t have…

Last week I received the perfect gift for my seventh wedding anniversary — from a co-worker.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

At a meeting I happened to mention this blog. She checked it out and then sent me a message: “I’m reading your blog and now I’m all confused about what I want to do re: changing my name. Hmm…”

To me, confusion is simply the predecessor to thinking, which, when considering a monumental decision like a name change, is imperative. (The sadness of post-name change regret, as I wrote in January, is magnified because it’s so easily avoided.)

I asked her what she and her significant other had been thinking of doing. “I was going to take his with mine as a middle name. Now maybe we’re both going to hyphenate,” she replied. Hooray! Not only identity preserved but equity!

Happily ever after is so much more likely when both spouses start with their identities intact. So congratulations, M. on thinking ahead, and thanks for the perfect gift.

Posted on by

What’s in a last name? Almost $500K

A friend sent me a link to this Salon story about a new study by Dutch researchers that shows that women who keep their last names after marriage — as opposed to taking a spouse’s or hyphenating – are judged as ” more independent, more ambitious, more intelligent, and more competent.” Those judgments translate into practice: Name-keepers are more likely to be hired for a job, and to earn more, almost $500,000 more over a working life.

If I was more cynical feminist, I’d pair this study with the one researchers at the universities of Indiana and Utah did last year in

Judgeth not, lest ye...oh, you know

Judge her not

which half of respondents saying the U.S. government should mandate name change at marriage (I’m still shuddering) and shout, “Aha! Now I’ve got you, patriarchal power structure! Make women change their names, squeeze their salaries over their lifetimes as a result, keep them dependent and quiet, and keep your comfy status quo!”

But I’m not that kind of a feminist.

On the face of it the Dutch study results endorse one of this blog’s aims – that more women choose to keep their birth names upon marriage. And I’m certainly glad it didn’t reveal the opposite. But my real, pie-in-the-sky goal, is to eliminate the judging that comes with women’s name choices. Why on God’s green earth IS it, as the study abstract says, that “studies show that women’s surnames are used as a cue for judgment”? Would studies ever show that men’s surnames are used as a cue for judgment? Sounds ridiculous, right?

It does because men (pausing to acknowledge the miniscule fraction who choose to hyphenate or adopt a wife’s last name) never have to deal with the question of name change, whether they marry or stay single. No change, no cue, no judgment.

So the only way to eliminate the judgment loops back to my original goal: Getting women to keep their birth names after marriage. A lot of women. And – the big step – getting women to pass their surnames on to their children in equal measure  to men. If we achieved name choice equality, if it really was equally likely that a child would bear a mother’s name as a father’s and then keep it for life, then there’s no basis for judgment.

When we get there, we really will have come a long way, baby.

More on this story: Harvard Business Review, NY Times, Salon.

Posted on by

Stand up. Whooo. Repeat.

Our northern neighbors are known as a fairly easygoing lot. But right on the heels of the Olympics, a tempest kicked up in Canada over a proposal to changing language in the national anthem, “O Canada,” to be gender-neutral.  Chastened by an uproar from Newfoundland to British Columbia, they recently dropped the idea.

One comment I read from an offended Canadian has had me seething for a week. About the idea of gender-neutral lyrics, she said

this: “It’s like women who refuse to change their names,” says one 30-something Canadian woman. “It’s so second-wave.”

Presumably, she’s part of the third wave or post-feminist wave, who think the gender equity achievements of the second wave in the

Rise up, sisters (and brothers).

Rise up, sisters (and brothers).

’60s and ’70s – notably in the workplace and in social attitudes – resulted in rigid, one-size-fits-all definitions of what and who qualifies as feminist.

Third-wavers reject these definitions and stereotypes – one of which is that to be a feminist, a woman must keep her birth name. And it’s their privilege to hold that opinion.

I can say that, because, like the offended Canadian quoted above, I’m a woman living in one of the most literate, wealthy, peaceful and healthy nations on the planet. A nation where people women can state their beliefs, even controversial ones, without fear of censure or repercussions, whether they be political, physical, sexual or emotional.

Here’s the thing, though: Not everyone does. Billions of women alone live in the bottom half of the countries that scored the lowest on the UN’s Global Gender Gap index. which measures women’s parity – or lack thereof – with men in terms of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. That health and survival are even part of the scale should give feminists from developed nations pause.

When there’s places in our world where pregnancy and childbirth are a major health risk, where patrilineal inheritance laws make widows into indentured servants, where girls as young as 10 can be married, we need waves – more and more and more of them, rippling from privileged Western nations to the shores of sub-Saharan Africa and the Persian Gulf and Middle Eastern countries where women’s lives face the most dire prospects.

It’s a little early for baseball season, and I know Canada’s only got one team now. But I think it’s still time to stand up and make a wave.