A Million Ice Creams

Recently The Headcase wrote that marriages suffer when wives make more than their husbands. This morning I came across a study showing that a wife's income could suffer when she takes the name of her husband.

That's the finding from a group of researchers at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, writing in Basic and Applied Social Psychology (pdf here). The paper makes two big conclusions. The first, if highly stereotypical, is fairly predictable. When test participants knew a woman had taken the name of her husband, they judged her as "more caring, more dependent, less intelligent, more emotional and marginally less competent in comparison with a woman who kept her own name."

Interestingly, when test participants didn't have any surname information about a woman, they still viewed her as "less independent, ambitious and intelligent" than women who kept their name, were unmarried but lived with a partner, or men.

The second conclusion was more remarkable. Test participants were shown a job application that included a memo about a woman's name as well as her husband's, then asked to predict the applicant's potential salary. Wives who kept their own names were estimated to make roughly 861 euros more a month than women who took the name of their husband. Over a lifetime, that comes to roughly 350,000 euros.

For those readers too lazy to look up a conversion rate (that's my way of speaking to myself), the authors break down this figure in starker terms:

361.708,20 euros. That is more that a million ice creams, a large family house in the middle of The Netherlands, or four luxury BMW's from the 5 series, with all accessories.

Apparently the Dutch like their ice cream. Cue "Austin Powers":

The salary conclusion came with some big caveats. Test participants were students without much job experience. Also, a woman is unlikely to introduce herself as Jane Taylor, wife of John Doe. But when such information is discovered, clearly there's a cognitive shift.

It should be noted that this study found no difference between women who take their husbands name and those who choose hyphenated last names. Previous research has found such a difference, however:

• A 2002 study in Sex Roles found: "In comparison with the average married woman, the woman with a hyphenated name was perceived as more friendly, good-natured, industrious, and intellectually curious. She was also perceived as well educated and as more likely to have a career."
• A 1999 study in Psychology of Women Quarterly concluded something similar: "The woman who took her husband's name was perceived as less agentic and more communal than women who either kept their maiden name or hyphenated their name."

So women who make more get divorced, and women who keep their names make more. In other news, Liz Taylor.

(HT: Barker)

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