KEY POINTS:
It's 114 years since New Zealand women got the vote, Helen Clark is our second female Prime Minister, and women are starting to dismantle one of the few remaining bastions of male supremacy.
A small but growing number of women are passing their own surnames on to their children, rather than their husbands' or partners'.
While this practice is well established in situations where the father is absent or unwilling to be involved with his children, it is increasingly being considered a viable option when the family unit is intact.
Suzanne Broadbent, 37, of Pakuranga in east Auckland, gave 8-year-old daughter Tessa her surname.
"It was purely a logical decision," she says. "It wasn't an emotional thing. It wasn't a feminist thing.
"It was just: this is silly, that boys and girls get their father's name."
Suzanne's son, Taylor, 9, has the surname of her partner, David Rooney, 35. "He may have preferred to have both his children with his name, but there's always got to be a little bit of compromise," she says. "Obviously, I've compromised by my son having his father's last name."
Both of 36-year-old Nelson woman Sharon Gibson's daughters - Milla, 4, and Stella, 2 - have her surname. Before the gender of their first child was known, she and husband Wayne Pool, 46, decided girls would be given Sharon's name and boys given his. "That seemed fair. It seemed odd to us to accept the fact that your children get the husband's name," she says. "This works really well. The only down side is that I figure people who don't know us might think that Wayne's not the father."
Feilding mum Rachael McLaughlin, 24, passed her surname down to daughters Leah, 3, and Shania, 2. Pragmatism rather than ideology drove the decision.
Around the time of Leah's birth, a convicted murderer from Masterton with the same surname as her partner Martyn Howse, 27, was back in the media, and Martyn was keen that his daughter not be associated with that high-profile case.
"He wanted to give our second daughter his last name, though," says Rachael. But having grown up in a household as the child with the odd surname out, she promptly vetoed that suggestion.
"It was horrible. I'd never put that on a child."
Maureen Molloy, women's studies professor at the University of Auckland, says she's observed a raft of unconventional naming options, including using the mother's name.
"I guess the message is that people have more choice. It's partly feminism, that kind of egalitarianism that women are no longer absorbed under their husbands' identity."
Chairperson of the Auckland branch of the Celebrants Association of New Zealand Kerry-Ann Stanton believes it's a trend that is likely to gain momentum. While she hasn't personally performed a naming ceremony for a child receiving its mother's surname, she knows of instances where that has occurred.
"As more women keep their maiden names, I imagine, it will trickle through into giving children their surnames, especially as more women start to realise it's only a social convention that a child is given the father's surname," she says.
So entrenched is the patriarchal naming tradition, it's often believed that parents are legally obliged to give a child her or his father's surname. In fact, the Department of Internal Affairs advises that a child may be given any surname, provided it doesn't cause offence or bump the length of the full name over 100 characters.
