Mackenzie Scott’s name recently reached headlines for her charitable donations to 116 organizations fighting for social and economic change. However, in top news sites such as the Business Insider and Fortune, her name does not stand alone. In fact, it’s usually preceded by the words “Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife” or followed by the words “the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos.” How about instead of labeling her after her ex-husband, whom she divorced over a year ago, we recognize her simply for being her? For her contribution to the creation of Amazon? For her pledge to give away most of her money to charity, something that Bezos selfishly refuses to do? What does throwing in the phrase, “Bezos’ ex-wife,” achieve, and what does that tell the girls and women who read those articles?

As a teenage girl myself, it tells me that my name means very little without a man’s name next to it. It tells me that to be known, I have to have a rich and successful husband. It tells me that no matter how much Scott accomplishes or how much she gives back to the world, she will always be Bezos’ ex-wife. People will say that title is fitting because, well, she wouldn’t have that money without him. But have they thought about it being the other way around? 

When Bezos first conceived of his idea for a startup which would later become the multinational online retailer we know as Amazon, Scott supported him throughout the entire journey, despite the high risk of failure. From leaving behind their comfortable lives in New York to dropping her own aspirations of becoming a novelist, Scott worked as the first accountant for Amazon, pushing through the tedious work that is necessary for the initial stages of running a start-up, including arranging their first freight contract. Without her, who knows where Amazon would be now––who knows if Bezos would have even pursued this dream? She earned the 25% of Bezos’ fortune (amounting to roughly 36 billion) that she received in their divorce settlement, if not more, but because she was his spouse, “proving” her contribution is not easy. Many people don’t realize Scott’s crucial role in the development of Amazon, and they still say that Bezos is responsible for her wealth and that she is hardly anybody without him. 

When will she be recognized for her hard work, for her own efforts?

After all, she’s putting her billions of dollars toward charity. In May of 2019, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, publicly vowing to donate the majority of her fortune within her lifetime and promising to “keep at it until the safe is empty.” So far, she has donated 1.7 billion dollars toward causes such as racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, economic mobility, functional democracy, public health, climate change, and more, which she described in her post on Medium. That’s much more than we can say of Bezos, whose reluctance and lack of giving has brought him much criticism, particularly in times like these. As social issues and economic problems continue to plague America, Bezos has been accumulating millions of dollars each day, making “the annual salary of one of Amazon’s newly minted $15/hour employees every 11.5 seconds.”

So why is Scott still being recognized for being his ex-wife when she is so much more? 

Not to mention, her lifelong dream was nowhere close to helping her husband run a company or becoming a billionaire. Ever since she was little, she wanted to be a novelist––she wrote an entire 142-page book at six years old which unfortunately was ruined in a flood. However, after attending Princeton, where Pulitzer-prize winning writer Toni Morrison thought she was “one of the best students [she’s] ever had in [her] creative-writing classes,” Scott went on to write two books. Though it took her years to get it done due to her many other responsibilities involving Amazon and her children, her debut novel, “The Testing of Luther Albright,” won an American Book Award.

While the media might not have purposely intended to diminish Scott’s name and likely just wanted to attract more viewers, adding “Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife” in the headlines a whole year after their split––when he was the one who cheated on her––prevents her from truly separating from him and making a name for herself. Shouldn’t the fact that Scott donated 1.7 billion dollars be enough? On television, women usually play the role of the wife or the love interest of the main character, and the news media is doing the same exact thing, telling girls that that’s all they are. Mackenzie Scott is many things: the fourth richest woman in the world, a billionaire, a philanthropist, a novelist, the founder of an anti-bullying organization, but she is not just another rich man’s ex-wife.

Putnam-Walkerly, K. (2020). MacKenzie Scott’s Surprise $1.7 Billion Gift [Digital image]. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisputnamwalkerly/2020/08/02/7-lessons-donors-can-learn-from-mackenzie-scotts-surprise-17-billion-gift/#2224427b5eab