Hey guys, do you care if your wife takes your last name?
If you answered yes, you are likely less educated than your peers who answered no, a Portland State University researcher has found.
The results of the research, published last month in the academic journal Gender Issues, revealed that men who expressed a preference on whether a woman takes their last name were likely to have a lower level of education, according to the author, Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer, a sociology professor at the university.
To get to that end, Shafer set up a hypothetical wherein a woman, Carol, was working extra hours in the hopes of getting a promotion. Her husband, called Bill Cook in the hypothetical, felt an extra burden as he had to pick up some extra housework due to Carol's long hours.
In the survey, given to 1,242 people, respondents were asked to choose between three last names for the woman: Sherman, Sherman-Cook or Cook.
The results indicated that less educated men as less accepting of women who keep their own last names.
"Men with a high school diploma or less view women who keep their last names as less committed wives, whose husbands should accept fewer late workdays and are more justified in divorcing them," the university said in a statement about the study.
The inverse was also true.
"Among men with more education and all women, surname choice has little effect on perceptions of a wife's commitment to her marriage or the standards to which she is held," the university said.
Shafer said the results were indicative of what she called an "uneven and stalled" evolution of gender equality in which some women have made fantastic gains, in comparison to their male counterparts, while others have seen little to no benefit.
"The gains women have made in the last 60 years -- for example, in terms of employment and earnings -- have not occurred equally across socio-economic groups or across outcomes," Shafer said in a statement.
-- Kale Williams
kwilliams@oregonian.com
503-294-4048
@sfkale
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