Women Academicians and Their Surnames After Marriage in Publications

I remember the horror we faced clearly when one of the academicians in the department I was working was going through divorce. As the research assistants at the time, at the bottom of the hierarchy, we had to manually update all teaching, academic expectations, and publications documents, checking the new surname was updated, and if we missed one, we were scolded with cynical comments.

 

Years later, in a textbook (I wish I could remember the book to cite here), a nurse academician was suggesting to always use the maiden name for publications. I felt strongly supportive of this opinion and promised myself to do so, if I ever get married. Eventually I did, in Australia, and legally I did not have to take my partner's family name, so I was happy hopping in the grass fields.

My happiness lasted till I tried to transfer the marriage papers to Turkey, I was given two options at the Turkish embassy, either just my partner's family name, or both. Of course, I had this 15-character, two surname that would not fit in anywhere in any applications and took ages to sign anything. 

 More than10 years later, apparently nothing was changed. Back to the feminist action of publishing in my maiden name, turns out that was also not very practical, as some journals accessed my government identity, and went ahead and published in my 15-character, two surnames. Around the same time, another colleague of ours got divorced, she was invited to our seminar to give a speech, we learnt that we used the wrong surname in the invitation and all the posters for the seminar, and she was very upset. 

  When it comes to surname, one might argue that my maiden name belongs to my father and not my mother anyway. No one knows my mother’s maiden name (which I know, that it comes from her father), even so it is being used by banks as an ID check! I can win or and loose that argument, but I wondered how much this effected my colleague’s publication scores, academic activity scores and so their career (a study in progress)..

 Nowadays there are solutions; like an ID number specifically for academic writing (ORCID) that can tie your known names together. And countries like Australia, DESPITE not have solved their domestic violence, women can at least keep father’s name. Holly father. Virgin mother…

Anyway, I have returned to Australia, started publishing here again, enjoying my father’s surname alone and only in publication. Am I back to happy fields of grass, No. 

Now I have the shying concern of my colleagues. They hesitate to ask this very personal question. They are mostly genuinely concerned about my wellbeing, and sometimes just curious; ‘Hey, why did you change your surname, is everything ok at home?’ They think I might be going through divorce.

Them being concerned does not annoy me, on the contrary, I am grateful. 

This tiny little privileged problem of mine, even though very insignificant considering the current world events, is bloody annoying because my male colleagues never even have to think about this. Yet it took so much of my time and energy in the past.