Doing gender and the surname choices of married women

Abstract

Marital surname choices reflect deeply embedded, often unspoken gender norms. According to the marital exchange/bargaining approach, women are more likely to adopt their husband’s surname when they have lower status—measured by education or earnings—relative to their spouse. In contrast, the compensatory gender display approach suggests that women may also take their husband’s name when their status exceeds their husband’s, to compensate for their deviation from traditional gender roles. Using natality data from 2000 to 2021, we find consistent evidence supporting compensatory gender display. Women in different-sex marriages are more likely to take their husband’s surname both when they have lower and higher educational status than their husband, with the likelihood increasing as the educational gap grows. Notably, wives with more education than their husbands have remained especially likely to adopt their husband’s name over the past two decades—even as women have increasingly outpaced men in educational attainment and such marriages have become more common. These findings highlight the enduring power of gendered expectations and reveal how traditional gender norms continue to reinforce male dominance in the symbolic realm of naming, despite women’s rising status.