Money Versus Missus: How Women Slowly Gained Financial Rights In The USA
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
Many of us take our right to financial services for granted. With few exceptions, anyone with a bit of cash or an income can open a bank account, apply for credit and get approved, take out loans, or invest in a retirement account.
Few women realize just how great a price we paid to get those rights here in the USA.
The history of women’s rights––including their property and financial rights––is a long one, and it dates back to the earliest days of this country’s founding. At the time of this writing, we are heading into an uncertain new year and leaving behind a difficult, chaotic one in return.
It’s the perfect time to stop, learn, and reflect on the ways our foremothers fought and won the financial rights we enjoy today.
Wealth, Interrupted: How Women Became More Than Property And Became Property Owners, Instead
Some people feel that it’s hyperbole to say that women were once little more than property belonging to the men in their lives, but both legally and socially speaking, this is simply a historical fact.
Before 1839, women had no legal or financial rights apart from their husbands’. Before marriage, they would find it nearly impossible to defend their own assets if a father or male guardian threatened them. In marriage, this was referred to as the law of coverture. In either case it was commonplace for a woman to hold on to very little of the money she inherited, earned, or put up as collateral for investments and loans. This was true of her wealth in any form. Cash, land, and other property all became her husband’s upon marriage.
In addition to this harsh reality, single women were incredibly vulnerable to poverty and social ostracizing. Marriage was the norm, and women were, in a sense, pushed into it by the legal and social circumstances all around her.
Simply put, women had no real way to avoid dependency, save for (in some cases) eventual widowhood. Most women at that time did not outlive their husbands, at least partly due to the risks of childbirth and a comparatively poorer diet and lifestyle.
Mississippi was the first state to begin the gradual process of ensuring married women the right to their own property. In 1848 the New York legislature passed their Married Woman’s Property Act, which was more extensive and far more enforceable than earlier versions of the law.
For the first time, American women living in this state were able to refuse to pay a husband’s debt, negotiate and sign contracts independent of a male relatives or husbands, collect inheritance or rents without male involvement, and file lawsuits on their own behalf. In time other states began to follow New York’s example, and these rights eventually became widespread in the U.S.
These rights were a step in the right direction (so to speak), but challenges still presented themselves at every turn for women who wished to earn, save, and grow their wealth.
The Property Act legally allowed married women to own property independently––along with the aforementioned contract and legal rights––but that did not mean that their reality matched up with the law’s intent. Married women were still routinely discriminated against, and enforcement of the Property Act was spotty. Unmarried women still faced normalized discrimination and a glaring lack of legal protection when they sought to own and maintain their own property.
We still had a long way to go.
Banking On Their Future: Women Gain Their Banking Rights Piece By Painstaking Piece
As with property and inheritance, women’s banking rights were merged with their husbands’ throughout the early days of American history. A woman could not open a bank account independent of their husband, nor could she make deposits or withdrawals without his signature and approval.
California was the first state to change this. In 1862 the California legislature established women’s right to exercise control over any money she deposited in her own name. The Homestead Act of that same year established land ownership rights for unmarried women, and together these Acts opened up radical new opportunities for women on the U.S. frontier.
Or, rather, for white women on the frontier. It’s important to keep in mind that all of these rights were early victories only for those who enjoyed the privileges of being white, non-immigrant persons. At the time, many states considered enslaved persons to be property, and plenty of white women listed slaves as part of their newly protected rights in this area.
So, take all of these victories with a very large grain of salt––black, brown, indigenous, asian, and other non-white American women would have to wait a very long time for the same rights to be granted to them.
Like property rights, banking rights were largely a state-by-state, incremental achievement for women in the U.S.A. And again, rights on paper did not necessarily translate into real, exercisable rights for married or unmarried women. Life is complicated, and financial life has always been heavily nuanced in this country.
Still, some places repeatedly became hubs for women’s right to earn, own, and grow their assets. Women received the right to own patents as early as 1790, and a black businesswoman was the first to register a patent under this new Act. For the most part, women were still unable to own property independently of their husbands, so the impact of this legal protection was undercut by state-level discrimination…but it was still one of many incremental steps in the right direction.
Eighty years later, New York again broke ground (pun intended) by registering the first female stock brokers on Wall Street. Victoria and Tennessee Woodhull became millionaires after opening their own brokerage and successfully running it despite fierce competition and outright antagonism from their male counterparts.
After these victories, women had more or less established their right to own and grow their wealth. But what about their right to earn that wealth in the first place?
Things became a bit more complicated in this arena.
Earning The Right To Earn: Women, Work, And The Right To Seek Paid Employment
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
In the 1870s, women witnessed some major backsliding when it came to their financial rights. In 1873 women were officially banned from practicing law––as established by the Supreme Court Case Bradwell v. State of Illinois––and this ruling extended beyond the individual case and represented a denial of women’s established right to hold a profession.
In 1875 the same court upheld a ban on women’s voting rights despite the efforts of suffragettes to establish suffrage for their sex. These women had, by that time, fought and died in the name of a future where women could have a say in their own legal fates, but it would take another forty-five years for that vision to be realized for white women, and another few decades for non-white women to experience the same.
Without the right to work for pay, and without the right to vote and establish this right or others via the ballot, women’s ability to earn money was effectively crippled. These kinds of restrictions severely limited women’s general autonomy, as financial rights have always been directly tied to a person’s independence and influence over their own lives.
In the early twentieth century, smaller setbacks were more nuanced and less obvious than these larger hurdles. A lack of labor protection or the uneven regulation of labor both played a role in limiting women’s earning potential and quality of life.
Disasters such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire demonstrated the lack of oversight women’s labor rights were given versus men’s. In trades traditionally deemed “woman’s work” laborers were generally paid significantly less, worked under worse conditions, and were forced to tolerate poor conditions and a lack of respect in order to retain their employment.
A person’s right to earn income is tied to every other right they possess. Income is the defining parameter for one’s quality of life, ability to encounter opportunity and take advantage of it, and much more. Women have been especially limited in their earning potential and rights, and despite arguments to the contrary, we are still dealing with the legacies of discrimination via the pay gap and industry-specific “glass ceilings” that still exist today.
Still, there have been a number of significant victories in this regard. Women today earn more pay parity and earning potential than ever before. This is largely thanks to the labor movements of the early-to-mid twentieth century.
In 1938 the Fair Standards of Labor Act was passed, and the eight-hour workday was established as a right for all citizens regardless of gender or age. Child labor was eventually outlawed, and other legislative acts protected employees from extortion, harassment, and unsafe conditions.
These laws did a great deal for women in the working world and greatly enhanced their ability to earn and continue to earn a steady income, even as certain aspects of them limited their rights in other ways. Our financial history is, at best, complicated.
Not So Long Ago: Women’s Financial Rights Are Still Evolving, And Your Financial Reality Is Already Different Than Your Mother’s Was
You might think that financial rights were, by and large, fully established for women by the turn of the century. The facts paint a different picture.
The Equal Pay Act was not passed until 1963, for example, and it had not been seriously enforced until recently. Even now there is a campaign of deregulation by denial that threatens women’s ability to earn and enjoy equal opportunities at the level of their male counterparts.
Title IX, which protects women’s right to an education and therefore future job prospects, was not passed until 1972. Reproductive rights are directly tied to women’s financial solvency, and these did not receive official protection until 1973––and they have been under constant attack ever since.
One of the most surprising facets of this long road toward equity lies in women’s overall banking rights. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was not passed until 1974. This act made it illegal for banks and loan agencies to discriminate against women when deciding who was eligible for loans, savings accounts, and all forms of credit. They could no longer deny women their right to these opportunities based on sex, marital status, perceptions of their viability based on stereotypes or possible pregnancies, or any other gender-based factors.
Before this, many institutions routinely denied women the right to open accounts, own credit cards in their own name, or take out loans for businesses, mortgages, and vehicles.
1978 marks the first year in which it became illegal to discriminate based on pregnancy or potential pregnancy, which had been an often-used excuse to deny women pay increases, promotions, or job positions in general prior to the passing of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which further outlined and protected a woman’s right to fight against pay discrimination, was not passed until 2009.
All of this legislation is extremely recent. They were passed not in our grandmothers’ time, but in our mothers’. And many acts and laws are not properly enforced or implemented––the pay gap is just one example of how such issues persist and impact women’s financial potential at every step of their lives.
Setbacks such as the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling (which established businesses’ right to deny birth control coverage to employees), the regular harassment and degradation of women in the workplace as highlighted by the #MeToo movement, and the personal experiences of millions of women attest to the fact that we still have more work to do.
As we exit one uncertain year and enter another, women are facing new, pandemic-related financial challenges they have never seen before. These challenges are a poignant reminder that we are not guaranteed our financial rights or even general equity by fate alone. These are rights we have only recently gained, and they must be continuously maintained and fought for both within and outside of the law.
It is the perfect time to reflect on all of the ways our financial rights impact all other rights in turn. The way we earn, save, invest, and handle our finances form the foundation of our ability to establish lives independent of others’ control. Without financial equality we are unable to exercise power or influence over our own lives, let alone the political life of the country.
It’s also important to know your rights, now more than ever. A labor movement has begun and is picking up steam in the U.S., but many women are ill-informed of their financial rights and do not know how to see them enforced. But you are guaranteed the right to earn equal pay for equal work, attain credit based on financial worthiness alone, compete honestly for well-paid jobs and promotions, and establish wealth independently of any man or other figure in your life.
Women struggled to get these rights, and as a society we must continue to speak out and fight to preserve them. This is the era in which we say, boldly and loudly, that women do not have to choose between their gender or their potential––financial or otherwise.
This article was made possible by our partners at Foumberg, Juneja, Rocher & Co. They are a financial firm operating out of Los Angeles, California, and are a proud supporter of women-led change. FJR believes that women’s voices shape the world––and that we deserve to have our stories told.
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