Comment by 0xbadcafebee
2 days ago
Well there was that whole genocide of Native Americans thing. And that Civil War thing where half the country was killing the other half. Black people were slaves, women couldn't vote (or own property, or a bank account, etc), being gay was illegal, the Irish were the immigrant whipping boys. Then there was the Jim Crow era, WWI, the Depression, Prohibition, WW2, McCarthyism, the Korean War, Vietnam (when the last Jim Crow laws were repealed).
But, sure, right now is the most depressing time in US history.
To be clear women gained the right to have bank accounts in 1974.
American Indian parents didn't gain the right to decide on their children's schooling until 1978.
The recency of these atrocities never ceases to surprise me. It's incredible how long we keep up barbaric practices and then how quickly they finally come to an end.
Marriage equality in the United States is only 10 years old. Anyone remember the debates as recently as the early 2010s? How many of us have high school diplomas older than any gay marriage certificate in the United States of America? It's absolutely ridiculous to look at arguments made barely over a decade ago about a thing that is now completely normalized and benign.
The legal right to open a bank account in her own name was codified at the federal level in 1974, but that's all it was - codification. Women had already gained that right on a state-by-state basis prior to 1900.
It's technically true, but it hides the actual reality.
> The legal right to open a bank account in her own name was codified at the federal level in 1974, but that's all it was - codification. Women had already gained that right on a state-by-state basis prior to 1900.
What's your source on this? What I seem to be able to find that seems consistent is:
* California was the first state to guarantee women the right to independently open bank accounts in 1862.
* Some individual banks not subject to a state mandate to do so chose to allow women (often with restrictions, conditions, e.g. relating to marital status, that did not apply to men) to open accounts independently.
* I can't find any source that indicates that being able to open independent depository accounts on the same basis as men was nationally acheived state by state as a legal right at all, much less prior to the 1900s.
* There's a common, consistently unsourced claim that the right to open an account (but not to be free of discrimination in terms, or to access credit on equal terms to men, etc.) was generally guaranteed by the states "in the 1960s"; but at least several sources expresses skepticism of this consistently unsourced claim and suggests it may be a myth originating in the fact taht Canada protected women's right to open bank accounts in 1964.
* Technically, women didn't get federal protection of a right to open bank depository accounts in their own name without discrimination in 1974, either, they got a right to equal treatment by institutions issuing credit. This had a side effect of guaranteeing equal access to those depository accounts that came with credit features, because those constituted issuing credit.
So, when did women federally get guaranteed equal treatment in bank depository accounts indepedently of those that also count as issuing credit? The same time that was guaratneed on the basis of race -- never. (There have occasionally been efforts to address this, and other permitted-disccrimination effects of the fact that banks are not included as public accommodations under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but none have passed that explicitly did so; the CFPB's power under the CFPA to address "unfair practices" was used to target race, gender, and other discrimination in financial services not subject to the ECOA or CRA, but that that was within the scope of "unfair practices" was a matter of agency rules and interpretation, not explicit in statute.)
“Actual reality” is women actually being able to open their own independent accounts. The laws you cited are technicalities. The history of civil liberties in this country is full of examples of institutions simply refusing to do the right thing until forced.
Ask your nearest boomer woman when she actually opened her own bank account without the approval of a man. I bet the results will surprise you.
My mom couldn’t deposit her babysitting money in rural Idaho without a signature from my grandfather. She couldn’t independently buy a car with that babysitting money. Her younger brother of course could. She rightly remembers this injustice.
Regardless of the laws or when they were passed the idea of financial discrimination against women is completely outside the Overton window today but it was the norm in living memory.
This is the “actual reality”.