You may now disenfranchise the bride
  May 26, 2026 Happy Monduesday, Meteor readers, Siri, play Ja Rule’s “New York”:  THIS IS THE FIRST TIME WE’VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN IN 27 YEARS, THE CITY IS HEALING ITSELF. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In today’s newsletter, we try to understand how a decision to change your name after getting married could impact your vote. Plus, Pope Leo XIV makes a big statement. Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONMrs. Voter: Despite its unpopularity in the Senate and with voters, Donald Trump is still working on making the SAVE Act happen with an obsessive laser focus that would put Gretchen Wieners to shame. In case you’ve forgotten, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act is a bill that has passed the House twice, only to be defeated in the Senate. Its supposed goal is to prevent non-citizens from voting, a problem that, once again, does not exist in the way that Republicans want their base to believe. But if passed, the bill would mainly affect American citizens. The bill would change voter registration and ID requirements—and establish a rule that the name on one’s current ID has to match one’s birth certificate. These requirements have many feminists concerned over the disenfranchisement of married women voters. First of all: How many people would this affect? Quite a few: According to a 2023 report from the Pew Research Center, roughly 80 percent of women married to men take their spouses’ last name after marriage, while five percent hyphenate their name. Ironically, of women who did change their name, white, Republican-leaning women were more likely to make the change compared to Democrats, moderates, and women of color. Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic women are more likely to take on a hyphenated name. It would appear the GOP is trying to shoot itself in the foot by making things harder for its base. These numbers also raise a related question: Why do the vast majority of all women continue to change their names despite there being no tangible benefit to doing so, and a mountain of paperwork to make it happen? “It doesn’t necessarily mean a conscious acceptance or endorsement of patriarchy,” author and marriage historian Stephanie Coontz tells The Meteor. Sometimes it’s a preference for a different name, a dislike for your own name, or a desire for the whole family to unite under one name, like an ancient Scottish clan. “For a lot of people, [it’s] just a convenient way to deal with the fact that they’re going to have kids and the kids [can’t] keep indefinitely combining their names,” says Coontz. In my own case, my full last name is Melero-Ureña, the surnames handed down by my father and my husband, respectively. My decision to hyphenate was driven largely by my culture, which traditionally applies a maternal and paternal surname to a child to preserve both lines of the family tree. But perhaps, in a strange way, surname changes are an acknowledgment of patriarchy’s erosion. A paper published last year in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility identifies a fascinating dynamic that the average married person may not have considered: “compensatory gender display.” Observing data from the state of New Jersey over a period of 21 years, researchers found consistent evidence that women who have lower financial or education status than their husbands tend to take his name, reflecting what they call a “marital exchange/bargaining approach.” This correlates with the Pew survey, which found that, overall, the more highly educated a woman is, the less likely she will take her husband’s name. But this study also found that women whose status exceeds their husbands’ are also more likely to take their husbands’ names than if their status were the same. They do so, the researchers argue, “to compensate for their deviation from traditional gender roles”—in other words, as a sort of apology to the world for their success. These cases “highlight the enduring power of gendered expectations…despite women’s rising status.” Whether we’re aware of it or not, there’s a bit of patriarchal residue over a lot of our decisions, and this one, about taking our spouse’s name, will likely be around for a while. But will hundreds of years of naming tradition and underlying patriarchy be the thing that kills our votes should the SAVE Act pass? Not if we keep pushing back. AND:
 HANG THIS IN THE LOUVRE…BUT DON’T LET IT GET STOLEN. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
