I preserve seeing articles and a few allusions on large monetary websites that say one thing alongside the traces of, “It was unlawful for girls to have financial institution accounts in their very own identify earlier than the Sixties.”
And this simply isn’t correct.
Whereas I’m all about stating the monetary obstacles girls face — and banking was and is considered one of them — this specific fantasy isn’t totally true.
Let’s discuss what actually occurred within the twentieth century and previous to get a greater take a look at girls’s banking historical past.
Not all girls
Let’s be completely clear with one thing upfront: Discourse round girls’s rights in American historical past most frequently revolves round white girls’s rights. Among the legal guidelines we’ll cowl in the present day date again to a time when slavery was nonetheless authorized. A few of them have been influenced by individuals who used blatantly racist arguments to prop up the rights of white girls.
We are able to see the residual results of that racism even to this present day. Black people and different marginalized populations are nonetheless being denied credit score or being given entry to much less credit score than white people in 2025. Some offenders over the previous 10 years embody:
- Wells Fargo
- Hudson Metropolis Financial institution
- Related Financial institution
- Financial institution of America
On high of restricted credit score, systemic poverty enforced by redlining and 1,000,000 different racially-charged legal guidelines signifies that you’re extra more likely to be unbanked for those who’re not white.
When you’re unbanked since you’re in Chexsystem, you may need ended up there due to the predatory charges banks are allowed to cost on low-income shopper accounts. When you’re in Chexsystem that successfully means you nonetheless can’t open a checking account at most monetary establishments to this present day.
Additional studying: Kassandra Dasent’s assessment of The Black Tax
Colonial America & Publish-Revolutionary America
Ladies may take part within the economic system — together with banking — in Colonial America. To be truthful, the proportion of girls that did take part in banking particularly was minuscule in comparison with complete populace as a result of there have been nonetheless so many societal obstacles. Although a a lot bigger portion of the inhabitants did have interaction in small enterprise endeavors.
It was slightly extra difficult for married girls. While you bought married, you have been sometimes topic to coverture legal guidelines, which primarily means you merge into the identical authorized being as your husband. In most colonies, that meant your husband may conduct enterprise relative to your shared property with out your consent, however you could possibly not do the identical with out his consent.
You possibly can, for those who have been monied and highly effective sufficient, develop into a feme sole dealer, which was a authorized allowance that allow you to evade coverture. On this method you could possibly get married and nonetheless preserve your personal authorized property as for those who have been single.
Whereas issues bought marginally much less good after the Revolution that established our new nation when it comes to banking and property rights, as strain to boost the primary era of American males fell on moms, by and huge these identical guidelines utilized to girls within the early days of America. Issues have been significantly favorable to girls (at the very least within the context of the occasions) within the Northeast, and New York state particularly had some progressive legal guidelines on this ceremony.
When issues began to alter course
Issues began to alter for girls within the Victorian age main as much as and together with the Industrial Revolution.
Why did they alter?
Mockingly sufficient, due to the rise of 1 particular girl to energy.
Queen Victoria of England is presupposed to have some fairly robust views on girls’s roles in society, which included unpaid home labor and motherhood as a divine calling. ‘Correct’ girls weren’t meant to work exterior the house. Her philosophies unfold to the States.
This was additionally the period when girls have been thought-about to be morally superior, and needed to tackle the burden of amending males’s iniquities whereas being discouraged from constructing their very own independence.
In some ways, this was a revolt in opposition to the relative positive aspects girls’s rights had skilled in England within the 1700s.
How a lot of those widespread ideas of the time can really be ascribed to Victoria’s opinions is slightly cloudy. Whereas she is on document saying girls shouldn’t pursue sure professions, and after her dying some feedback she made casting the ladies’s rights motion in a adverse mild surfaced and circulated, she was additionally used as a foil by either side of girls’s rights actions just because she was a lady in energy.
A variety of girls who weren’t wealthy nonetheless did work. Issues weren’t equal in the direction of them, and there was plenty of office harassment. (Arguably whereas issues have gotten higher, these circumstances nonetheless exist in 2025.)
Wealthy girls usually handed from being an attachment on their father’s property to merging into their husband’s property, with out build up any property or financial savings they may really name their very own.
Early legal guidelines for girls’s property and banking
It’s fascinating that the variety of legal guidelines defending girls’s monetary rights rise precisely when these rights have been successfully being additional restricted due to shifting societal norms.
Most of those legal guidelines utilized to married girls as a result of, once more, for those who have been single or widowed or divorced, you have been nonetheless allowed to carry property or open a checking account. At many, although not all, banks, you may want a male relative’s consent, however this was a bit much less widespread than for those who have been married.
Simply since you have been allowed to handle your funds independently for those who weren’t married didn’t imply you didn’t face discrimination. A financial institution may refuse to lend to you or can help you open a checking account based mostly in your gender, although plenty of the tradition round these legal guidelines different in several states.
There have been usually ‘Women Ready Rooms‘ at banks that have been pleasant to girls. Relying on the state and the person financial institution, these rooms have been meant so that you can wait whereas your husband carried out enterprise, or so that you can wait whereas somebody within the ‘Women Division’ ready for the assembly regarding your personal, unbiased funds.
1839: Married girls can maintain property in their very own identify in Mississippi. However like…
Mississippi is usually credited as the primary state that handed legal guidelines permitting married girls to carry their very own property. However the story is messy.
Keep in mind how I mentioned girls’s rights have been usually advocated for in a racially-charged method?
This story is not any exception.
Each authorized circumstances that culminated within the passage of the Married Ladies’s Property Act of 1839 centered round a lady’s proper to personal an enslaved particular person as her personal property.
The opposite side of this story is that whereas Mississippi was the primary state to really feel the necessity to go the sort of regulation, Louisiana Civil Code might have had some modicum of affect on the case. And Louisiana Civil Code already allowed married girls to keep up their very own property.
Please observe that I don’t condone the language used within the following piece, however you possibly can take a deeper dive on the historical past of this particular regulation right here.
1848: Married Ladies’s Property Act in New York State
In 1848, New York State handed a regulation that gave married girls the precise to personal their very own property. It must be famous that regardless of being a Northern state, slavery did nonetheless occur in New York. So it’s not like that component was taken out of the equation.
This regulation gave married girls the precise to:
- Not be routinely answerable for her husband’s money owed.
- Enter contracts independently.
- Accumulate rents in her personal identify.
- Obtain inheritances in her personal identify.
- File a lawsuit on her personal.
Each single different state adopted go well with over the subsequent 52 years, with comparable legal guidelines on the books throughout the nation by 1900.
1862: First state permits girls to open financial institution accounts no matter marital standing.
That’s proper. Alllll the way in which again in 1862, California turned the first state to go a regulation that explicitly allowed girls to open a checking account in their very own names — no matter marital standing. So even married girls may take part independently.
One thing to notice, each with New York and California, is that these legal guidelines have been impacted by folks concerned within the Suffragist motion. Many within the Suffragist motion have been notably racist, utilizing the rights that Black males technically however not at all times successfully gained after the Civil Warfare as an argument for why white girls must be granted political energy and the precise to vote.
Banker of Observe: Maggie Lena Walker
1862: Homestead Act
In 1862, Abe Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. There’s quite a bit to say concerning the Homestead Act, however there are two pertinent factors in in the present day’s context.
The primary is that it pushed cultural norms by not requiring a male cosigner for single girls to take part in homesteading in their very own identify. Whereas it wasn’t a banking regulation, the truth that this coverage was included was of influential observe.
The opposite factor to notice with the Homestead Act is that, as soon as once more, systemic obstacles made it tough for Black folks to take part no matter gender. Kassandra keyed us into the actual fact that whereas previously enslaved folks have been eligible, the applying charges have been excessive sufficient to be prohibitive to an already economically disenfranchised folks, leading to 99% of the beneficiaries of the Homestead Act being white.
So, what occurred within the Sixties, then?
To be actual with you, I’m not 100% certain what individuals are referring to once they say one thing within the Sixties occurred to make it authorized for girls to carry a checking account. All I can discover are unsourced declarations parroted throughout finance websites over the previous couple of years.
There have been legal guidelines handed that protected girls in opposition to (sure varieties of) pay discrimination when it got here to the minimal wage, and in opposition to sure circumstances of employment discrimination. White girls did handle their method into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, too, although this regulation didn’t apply to banks.
What I can let you know is what occurred within the Nineteen Seventies.
RBG and credit score
Okay, so we all know that at the very least for the reason that mid-1800s if not prior, girls may open a checking account in their very own identify. Whether or not they may do it as a single girl or a married girl different by state. And even in states that allowed it, there have been cultural practices that successfully resulted in discrimination.
Credit score was much more of an issue, and it was turning into an growing concern as People began relying extra closely on credit score within the twentieth century. In these cases, married girls have been usually nonetheless thought-about to be one authorized physique with their husbands, and banks usually required the husband’s signature and property to be thought-about on the applying.
On this area, single girls additionally confronted discrimination, particularly in the event that they have been youthful and of marrying age. The belief was that when they bought married, they’d not work or have an earnings, and subsequently they’d be unhealthy accounts to tackle.
Perceived fertility wasn’t the tip all and be all, although — we have been nonetheless holding onto some Victorian values that girls have been the weaker intercourse, extra emotional and incapable of dealing with sensible, logical issues on their very own. Like cash, and extra particularly, credit score.
In 1974, after plenty of nice work from RBG whereas on the ACLU, the Equal Credit score Alternative Act handed, which, amongst different issues, required banks to think about credit score purposes in a lady’s personal identify no matter marital standing, and solely allowed banks to require the consideration of a husband’s funds if it was a joint software.
My understanding (I’m not a lawyer) is that these laws utilized to anybody who issued credit score, and since banks and monetary establishments are those that have a tendency to supply credit score, additionally they may not make these necessities of these making use of for deposit accounts, both.
Although, once more, relying on the place you lived, you could have already been shielded from that discrimination by state regulation for deposit accounts in technicality if not observe.
Why is that this necessary?
Have been issues tougher for girls with regard to banking previous to the Nineteen Seventies?
Completely.
Nevertheless it was not unlawful for a lady to carry a checking account previous to the Sixties. Loads of girls did, and a few girls additionally held mortgages and different monetary merchandise in their very own names. Some girls have been independently rich of their partner or lack thereof.
Rather a lot the ladies who did maintain financial institution accounts have been single — whether or not they be single moms, by no means married, or widowed. Total, they confronted plenty of monetary obstacles significantly when it got here to office and employment discrimination. However once they have been allowed to earn cash, some have been allowed to handle it, and lots of of them deserve some props for doing so.
It’s not simply the erasure of girls’s contributions that’s necessary. Once we faux like nothing was allowed for girls within the monetary sector previous to the Nineteen Seventies, we additionally erase the systemic racism constructed into our authorized historical past. Many of those legal guidelines have been handed in favor of white girls’s whiteness, generally in direct and vocal opposition to the rights of Black residents and different marginalized residents.
We proceed to see the remnants of those ideologies handed on by our legal guidelines and the observe thereof in the present day.