Changing your Surname with Marriage and Recruitment Discrimination

Women who choose to adopt their husbands’ surnames may be penalized in the job market, a new study from the Netherlands suggests. The authors did several experiments involving university students’ perceptions of hypothetical women — imaginary women who were described identically, except for their marital status and decision to keep or change their surnames. Results showed that participants thought a hypothetical woman who kept her maiden name “was judged as less caring, more independent, more ambitious, more intelligent, and more competent, which was similar to an unmarried woman living [with her partner] or a man.”
Another experiment asked students to judge fictional job candidates for a human resource manager position. Women who took their partners’ names were less likely to be hired by the study’s participants, and their salaries were estimated to be significantly lower (a difference of €861.21, or $1,172.36). The study, recently published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology, can be found on the Web in an earlier version here.

Alter Gender Sprache Englisch