It has long been unfair that women can be identified by their
marital status through the use of
"Miss" or "Mrs" whereas men cannot via "Mr".
"Ms" was introduced as an alternative for both married and unmarried
women, although is not universally used or liked.
Many journalists struggle when a married woman doesn't take her
husband's surname, as seen in numerous articles referring to Nick Clegg's wife
Miriam González
Durántez as
"Mrs Clegg" despite that not being her name. Wikipedia even says
"Miriam Clegg, known professionally by....." !!?? Why is it so
complicated to understand that Miriam was given a surname at birth (actually
two as per Spanish custom) that she will use for her whole life? That's what
men do....
I have also noticed newspapers calling married women who have
kept their own name "Miss". When the tabloids revealed then Labour
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's husband's expense claims, many rather oddly
referred to a woman they knew was married, as "Miss Smith" !!?? It's
as if they think a woman who keeps her own name isn't properly married or
something (dinosaur alert!).
Anyone would think that not taking your husband's surname on
marriage was something new, unusual and shocking. It isn't new at all, although
it was when my Mum did it some forty (!) years ago in 1972. Like other women of
her generation, my Mum kept her name because she didn't like the historical
significance of taking your husband's surname, namely that you became his
property.
It is not unusual for women to keep their own name these days;
currently 50% of married women do, while 50% opt to take their husband's name.
There is also a trend, albeit somewhat middle class, for women to add their
husband's name to their own and sometimes give that double barrelled name to
their kids too.
The fact that people marry later and the vast majority of women
work, surely has an impact; changing surname in your 30s involves not only
bureaucracy (replacing driving licence, passport, credit cards etc), but also
several years of explaining your name change in a professional context. I have
seen linkedin profiles along the lines of "Jane Smith (nee Brown)"
that stay like that for years.
There is then the associated bureaucracy of changing your name
back to your "maiden" name, should you be unfortunate enough to get
divorced and not want to keep your ex-husband's name. I also know a handful of
women who still have the name of their first husband although they have since
divorced and re-married. Divorce also raises another question: should a
divorced woman stop being called Mrs and revert to Miss even if she still has
her husband's name or only if she changes her name back?
A friend who did not change her name when she married was very
annoyed to receive a cheque payable to a person who doesn't exist (my friend's
first name with her husband's surname). She had to take her marriage
certificate to the bank (!) to pay it in as obviously neither her bank account
nor any ID she possesses, is in the name of her husband.
So what do other European countries do? Well in Belgium, where I
used to live, an adult woman is officially "Madame" (in French) or
"Mevrouw" (in Dutch) and almost always in conversation too; I recall
being called "Mademoiselle" only very occasionally when in my early
20s. In Germany "Frau" is now used for all adult women, the German
version of Miss ("Fraulein") seemingly consigned to history or used
only for little girls.
In the European Parliament, I am referred to as
Madame/Frau/Mevrouw etc and this is even extended to English, where
"Mrs" is used in written and spoken communications. At first I found
being called Mrs when I am not married, a bit odd, but I soon got used to it.
Another aspect of using "Miss" is that it applies to
cohabiting women with children who have not married their partners, which seems
rather inaccurate i.e. it no longer necessarily identifies a single
(childless?) woman. A friend who is the deputy head of a primary school is in
theory still "Miss", despite living with her partner for more than 15
years and having two children.
A cohabiting friend with children wondered (in the days when
marital status was commonly on CVs) whether putting "single" was
misleading. That particular problem is now solved by the fact that marital
status is no longer included on a CV. In Belgium civil status ("état civil" in
French) was removed from ID cards some 10 years ago, which greatly pleased a
divorced friend who hated the fact that her ID card said "divorced"
rather than reverting to "single".
So I wonder if it is time to get rid of "Miss" given
that as well as being outdated and outmoded, its use is increasingly
inaccurate? The obvious route would be to follow what Belgium does, so all
adult women would become "Mrs". However, I wonder if some married
women, who rather like using Mrs to show that they are married, might object to
this? Comments welcome!
