Equality?
Thursday, 13 August 2009 | 13:45
70% of Americans polled in a recent study said they believed a woman should adopt her husband’s last name upon marriage. While I’m a little surprised that that statistic is so high, it’s not that out of the ordinary: many women do indeed take their husband’s name, and always have. But another statistic nearly made me fall off my chair: in that same study, 50% of respondents said they thought it should be a legal requirement that women take their husband’s name. As in, all women should be forced to lose their own name, or remain single.
WTF? Required by law to lose one’s own identity? Whilst this may be expected of the right-wing radicals and wingnuts out on the extreme end of the political spectrum, what surprises me – nay, utterly shocks me – is that half of the survey’s respondents had this attitude. Even more shocking is the reasoning behind this opinion; when asked why women should be expected to change their names, an oft-cited response was (and this is a direct quotation) that “women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family.”
Double WTF… That this attitude is apparently still so pervasive in mainstream America depresses me more than I can express. And should serve as a wake-up call for those who bleat that sexism no longer exists, that full equality is a reality, and that the glass ceiling was broken long ago. As this study illustrates, a whole lot of people still believe that women should be not only willing but be forced by law to give up their own identities when they marry, subjugating their selves to their husbands. The woman as chattel, a mere blank slate over which the man has free hand. Sigh.
And just in case you think this is an isolated incident, not indicative of a trend, Feministing reminds us of a 2004 case where a Pennsylvania court rejected a petition from a woman who wanted her daughter to have a hyphenated last name; the court found it was in the girl’s “best interests” to have only her father’s name. As well as a case a few years ago in Washington, DC, where a couple was denied a birth certificate for their baby because they had elected to give the baby the mother’s name instead of the father’s.
Related reading:
How about a man taking his wife’s last name?
Pandagon’s take on this issue
