Why is it that women have to change honorifics when they get married and not men? Women must change from Miss to Mrs., while men stick with Mr. regardless of their marital status. 

The practice of women changing their honorifics upon marriage has been common since the seventeenth century. Mrs. stemmed from the gender norms at the time, when a woman’s social status depended on her husband. It was aligned with coverture laws, where the legal identity of married women was subsumed by their husbands.

Currently, the use of Mrs. in society is being questioned more and more by third-wave feminism, with the argument that women shouldn’t have to prove their marital status if men don’t. This may seem insignificant to some, but it remains an important subject, as honorifics continue to shape the way people perceive each other.

Shifting to the use of Ms. for women, married or single, helps show the equality of men and women and the progress society has made in the past couple of centuries. It also provides privacy for women, as their marital status shouldn’t be such an easy thing to access in the workplace, especially just in someone’s name. Some may argue that a wedding ring has the same indication as the Mrs. in a woman’s name, but a wedding ring is something optional to wear, and has to be looked for physically, compared to Mrs. being in someone’s name. Ultimately, the choice of using Ms. or Mrs. should be left up to every individual woman. We as a society must recognize the importance of changing honorifics to adapt to modern times.