What Are You Going to Do With Your Last Name?

According to a recent study, 50% of Americans still believe that a woman should be legally required to take their husband's last name when they get married. Because we are, apparently, living in medieval times.

I know that today, the majority of women still change their last name when they get married. In fact, a 2006 article claimed that 80% of American women still choose to participate in the tradition. This number is much lower for academics, which I know from personal experience (I can only think of one female professor at Yale who even hyphenated her last name) and from a study that I can't find now that said only 30% of female academics change their last name.

The sexist symbolism inherent in the assumption that women will change their last names when they get married is left over from the days when US law followed the doctrine of coverture. This doctrine meant women had no legal rights; their father was legally responsible for them until they got married, when the husband took over. Who had coverture of a woman, including all of her property, was indicated by her last name, either her father's or her husband's. (Fun fact: Because women legally couldn't have property, husbands not only had to leave property to their sons in their will, but had to give custody of their children to a male relative - not the mother. If your husband died when you had a child that was, for example, five years old, that child became the "property" of one of your husband's male relatives, and not you).


Some people are content to say that since the US no longer abides by the doctrine of coverture, changing your last name is just a tradition. A nice tradition that enables you to share a last name, make it easier for people to know you're married, and for both of you to have the same last name as your children. But why is it the woman's responsibility to ensure all of these things? Why is it still the woman who has to change her last name?

Because it is a sexist tradition, a symbol that reinforces gender stereotypes and women's inferiority. I've heard many a (conservative) religious person argue that women should change their last names because doing so recognizes the man's headship of the family. And while I disagree with them that the idea of male headship is a great, necessary thing, I do agree with them that that is exactly what a name change implies.

I've spent a lot of time obsessing thinking about what to do with my last name when I get married. For me, the traditional route is simply not an option. I don't like the sexist implications, and I don't like what it says about the equality of me and my (future) partner in our (future) marriage. I am 90% sure that I will not change it or hyphenate it; that I will just stay "Shannon Hill." I like that I get to keep my last name, and symbolically demonstrate that we are distinct equals. I also like that I wouldn't have to spend any time, money, or energy on changing my last name on any documents.

A small part of me, however, does kind of like the idea of having the same last name as my partner. If I marry my current partner, pretty much nothing will change when we do get married because we will have already lived together for who knows how many years. It would be kind of nice to have some sort of symbolic change to represent our marriage. And it would be kind of nice to have some sort of symbolic, "oh hey world! we're a team!" throughout our lives. If we went this route though, he'd have to change his name too. We would become a team together; it wouldn't just be that I'm jumping on board Team Brett. Ideally, in this situation we would both end up hyphenating our last names, so I would be Shannon Hill-M and he would be Brett Hill-M. Sometimes, I actually think that doing it this way is more progressive, because the idea of a man changing his last name for a woman is even more unheard of then a woman just keeping her own. Additionally, then our names would match our children's, because our children would have Hill-Maiden as their last name regardless of whether or not I keep my maiden name or we both hyphenate them. (Although, honestly, I'm not too worried about this. I went through childhood having a mother whose name was Joanne Hill, then Joanne Maiden Name, then Joanne Step-Father's Name and no one ever got confused over who my mother was).

Another very small part of me wants to somehow incorporate my mother's maiden name into the equation somehow, because I love her and I hate patriarchy.

So, I would love to know, what do you think you will do with your last name when you get married, and why? If you're already married, what did you do with your last name, and why? Was it not important to you to break with the tradition? Or do you have a fun, creative way of disrupting the system that you'd love to share?

World Bank's 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development - We Still Have Work To Do

The World Bank has released its 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development.

I've provided a very brief overview and highlighted some of the interesting findings, so you don't have to read the full 452 page report yourself (although if you'd like to, you can find it here).

To begin with, the report highlights the relationship between gender equality and development. Gender equality is a development objective in its own right, and part of the Millennium Development Goals. Moreover, the report argues that development initiatives can contribute to greater gender equality, and that gender equality can enhance economic efficiency and improve development initiatives. The latter claim is derived from a growing body of microeconomic studies that demonstrate that you have to reduce social barriers and support women in order to profit from their skills and labor (i.e. ensuring that women who graduate from school have equal access to the workforce) and that women spend their money differently than men - choosing primarily to spend it on their families and children. Putting money into the hands of women can, therefore, have a direct impact on things like child nutrition and health or school enrollment.

The report features some of the ways we've made progress. The good news is:

-- More girls are in school and literate than ever before.
-- In one-third of developing countries (45), girls outnumber boys in secondary education.
-- The average total fertility has declined from 5 births per woman in 1960 to 2.5 in 2008.
--There is little evidence of systematic gender discrimination in the use of health spending or health services.
-- Over half a billion women have joined the world's labor force in the past 30 years.

Now on to the bad stuff:

-- Nearly 4 million women go "missing" every year. They are either never born due to a preference for sons, die in early childhood due to a misallocation of resources (i.e. give more food to your son than your daughter), or die from a maternal-related cause.
--Over a third of women die in their reproductive years.
-- Women account for 58% of the world's unpaid labor.
-- Globally, only 10-20 of every 100 land owners is a woman.
-- Women are responsible for 60-80% of all house and care work.
-- Even though more women have joined the labor force, they still largely work in feminized professions, economic spaces that are deemed appropriate for women's labor.
-- Gender-differentiated patterns of employment mean lower incomes for women.
-- Many women still don't have equal control of household resources or equal access to resources. Some women lack access even to their own earnings. 

The report helpfully includes a series of recommended policy actions. These include:

-- Eliminating gender disadvantages in education where they remain entrenched.
-- Ensuring women have access to more economic opportunities and that they are not confined to traditionally feminized, low-paying fields.
-- Increasing access to child care and early childhood development initiatives.
-- Increasing the number of women in politics.
-- Ensuring that women have access to and control of their own money and household resources, both in marriage and divorce.

There is a great video about the role of the international community and the World Bank's recommended policies here. There is also a handy chart!

In all, the report is full of fascinating data and a bunch of really interesting charts. Hopefully, the policy recommendations are observed, and the World Bank's next report shows even greater progress.