Before 1974, women in the United States could not get a credit card, a mortgage, or a business loan in their own name. Even women with college degrees and high-paying jobs were required to have a male co-signer, whether a husband, father, brother, or friend. Banks treated a married woman's credit history as belonging to her husband. Single and divorced women were considered poor credit risks by default. The law did not explicitly require this, but nothing prevented it either.
The push for change came from multiple directions at once. Feminist organizations that opened in the late 1960s and early 1970s began receiving letters from women across the country describing discriminatory treatment at banks. Representative Bella Abzug of New York had already been working to get credit protections into law, but she was not on the Banking Committee, which limited what she could do on her own.
The legislation that passed came largely through the work of Emily Card, a young political scientist serving as a legislative fellow in the office of Senator William Brock, a Republican from Tennessee. Card had experienced credit discrimination herself and recognized the issue when she saw a press release about the National Commission on Consumer Finance. She convinced Senator Brock to take up the cause, coordinated with organizations, including the National Organization for Women and the Women's Legal Defense Fund, and ensured Brock received thousands of letters from women describing the problem firsthand. She drafted legislation, called every woman she knew working in Congress to build support, and was on the Senate floor the day it passed.
President Gerald Ford signed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act on October 28, 1974. The law made it illegal for banks to discriminate in lending on the basis of sex or marital status. In 1976, Congress passed amendments expanding those protections to include race, color, religion, national origin, age, and receipt of public assistance.
The law did not immediately end discrimination in lending. Regulations lacked strong enforcement mechanisms, and bias in banking did not disappear overnight. Women opened women-run banks and launched financial literacy programs to fill gaps the law could not. Women with absent or imprisoned husbands still struggled to access credit in practice. The legal structure had changed, but the conditions around it had not fully changed with it.
