Why do women still change their names?

The stigma is paid in repeated encounters with family, in-laws and colleagues

Question: Why do women still change their names?
Position1 of 4›: Fearing stigmatisation from appearing "too feminist" causes women to change their surnames
Argument‹2 of 2: The stigma is paid in repeated encounters with family, in-laws and colleagues

The argument

A second version of this explanation concerns where the cost is actually paid. Advocates argue that the stigma attached to keeping a surname is rarely delivered as open disapproval, which would be easier to dismiss, and instead arrives as a long series of small frictions: a relative who addresses post incorrectly and has to be corrected, an in-law who treats the choice as a slight, a colleague who asks about it, and an acquaintance who asks again. Proponents hold that each of these is trivial on its own and that the aggregate is not. Supporters emphasise that these encounters occur among people a woman cannot avoid and generally does not want to antagonise. On this account the choice is not between two naming conventions but between a convention that is invisible and a convention that must be defended, repeatedly, to people with standing in her life. Advocates argue that the asymmetry of effort here is substantial even when nobody involved is hostile, because explaining a decision many times over is wearing in a way that never having to explain it is not. Proponents conclude that anticipation does most of the work. A woman who has watched someone else field those questions, or who simply expects them, can reasonably decide in advance that the convention is not worth the friction. Supporters hold that this is how a practice sustained by nothing more than social expectation can look, from inside, like a free and sensible choice, and why asking women their reasons will often not surface the mechanism at all.

Premises

[P1]The stigma attached to keeping a surname arrives as repeated small frictions rather than as open disapproval. [P2] Those frictions come from relatives, in-laws and colleagues, whom a woman can neither avoid nor easily afford to antagonise. [P3] One convention therefore has to be defended repeatedly while the other is never questioned. [C] Women change their surnames to avoid an accumulating social cost that, because it is anticipated rather than experienced, does not present itself as pressure.

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that an explanation which predicts that women will not report the mechanism is difficult to test, since it treats agreement and disagreement alike as confirmation. They also argue that the frictions described fall on anyone who departs from any convention, and that this does not by itself show the convention is unjust or that avoiding the friction is the reason for conforming. A further reply is that many women field those questions readily and keep their names anyway, which suggests the cost is bearable.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Open disapproval is also common, and where it occurs women often keep their names regardless, so the mechanism does not depend on the frictions being small. [Rejecting P2] Relatives and colleagues adjust quickly to a kept surname, so the friction is usually brief rather than accumulating. [Rejecting P3] Changing a surname carries its own repeated administrative and professional frictions, so neither option is free of them. [Rejecting C] An account that explains conformity by a pressure participants do not report cannot be distinguished from one that simply denies they know their own reasons.