It’s a funny myth but not true. Women were doing their own banking in America as far back as the 1700sm I’m not super up on my Soviet space programs but I think that’s a few years earlier.
Yes, and black Americans became fully equal citizens in 1868. /s
You can’t judge history and civil rights off of the exceptions or the ideas written on paper. I’m sorry. Acting like this is what the meme is talking about is just denying centuries of patriarchy in America.
The article literally says
the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed (1974), which, among other things, required banks to consider credit applications in a woman’s own name regardless of marital status
Gee, I wonder why a very specific act had to be passed to deal with this “non existent” issue that was solved in the 1700s. Gee. Weird.
Though, again, depending on where you lived, you may have already been protected from that discrimination by state law for deposit accounts in technicality if not practice.
Just an absolute garbage article you linked. Seriously. Reconsider your ability to think critically if you can’t understand how much this article is trying to downplay patriarchy from this quote alone.
Women were still largely dependent on being married and dependent on their husband to have any form of banking well into the timeline the meme is referring to. That article is like saying “I couldn’t find a law specific to race in the Jim Crow South related to voting”.
I don’t mean to overuse the analogy of racial discrimination. But I feel like people don’t actually understand how discrimination and laws actually work in reality when it comes to patriarchy. So, I’m hoping you at least understand it for other historical contexts.
Laws aren’t written to be “X identity group can’t do Y”. And trying to analyze the actual material outcomes by only looking for laws like that is going to give you the results the article you linked came to.
Laws of discrimination are written to be vague enough that the powers of white supremacy and patriarchy are allowed to be enacted at individual levels on mass scale - without directly writing them down.
Edit: this was originally just the /s comment. But holy shit that article they linked was so bad and ahistorical I couldn’t stop editing. Seriously. Please learn to think about what you’re reading. Don’t just upvote a comment because they had a “source”.
Sometimes I wonder if people don’t read comments they reply to; or if more and more people seem entirely incapable of comprehending what they are reading.
You can’t say “Bless your heart” and then follow it up with not actually arguing anything. Nothing you stated is in contradiction to my comment.
My comment and the original comment (and article) are not even discussing the USSR. It’s irrelevant to what is being discussed. Bless your heart, you really tried to put words together. You tried. At least your username is fitting.
Was my comment or even your original one debating the validity of when the USSR had women in space? June 16, 1963. No ones debating that.
The original article you linked and comment you made is what is being discussed by me mate. Why are you talking about the USSR in response to my comment that mentioned nothing of the sort. I’m disagreeing with your statement on women’s rights in America and the arguments made in the article. Do you think major legislation was passed in 1974 just for fun? To fix a problem that was fixed in the 1700s?
I know your brain hurts. You seem to be incapable of even understanding what you’re disagreeing with. Just stop mate. You’re embarrassing yourself.
Yes. American women could open a bank account well before anyone ever went to space.
Maybe English isn’t your first language. But, if I said, women cannot run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds, it would be obviously false because many can.
If you’re demanding some percentage of women, well that’s a different claim and frankly I’d imagine the number of female cosmonauts was also seriously restricted (they and their partners better not have said anything naughty about the party.)
Yes, and some black people voted in the Jim Crow South. Like, I hope you can understand how ridiculous it would be for someone to argue about black people’s voting rights being uninhibited because of exceptions. But that is fundamentally what you are doing with women’s rights.
Dude. I don’t know how else to explain this to you except through analogy. You seem to have a literal mental block when it comes to understanding patriarchy.
This isn’t about a “certain percentage”. You are fundamentally looking at “the exceptions that prove the rule” and instead saying “no, actually these exceptions were not exceptions at all. They were the norm”.
Or you’re just being a “technically Andy” and you aren’t actually interested in having a discussion. You’re just interested in being “technically right”. If that’s all you want. Sure mate. You are right that some women had individual bank accounts in the 1700s. Is that all you want? Like, wtf, are you that incapable of actually discussing historical structures on a level beyond individual anecdotes? I never said that this was wrong. Your use of exceptions to reach a generalized conclusion on women’s rights for banking pre 1974 is was is wrong. It’s what is wrong with the article you linked.
You are just proving your ignorance of having any understanding of patriarchy with every response. You won’t actually be able to understand what my initial comment was talking about until you just admit your own ignorance to yourself.
Good luck mate. I hope you do some reading or something. I can’t help you understand through Internet comments alone.
You can apply some common sense though. Women opening bank accounts was not some fringe thing only available to a few in 1975. It was the norm. In a city, the vast majority of banks would be open to women. Maybe there was one old fuddy duddy bank that refused to do it. But the vast majority would.
This is how anti-discrimination laws always work. The only way an anti-discrimination law can pass is if the vast majority of the population is already onboard with it. Laws tend to be passed banning discrimination when the tolerant majority gets tired of putting up with the bullshit of a bigoted minority. Until that threshold is reached, the standard is always “let people and companies decide on their own.”
Jim Crow was defeated when the vast majority of the US population had come to the point where they believed racial discrimination was wrong. It was the rest of the society collectively telling white people in south “we’re tired of your shit.”
If most women in the US could not open a bank account in 1975, then the vast, vast majority of banks must not have been offering them accounts. The only way that would happen is if the vast majority of the population opposed women having bank accounts. And if that was the case, there would have never been the political will necessary to pass an anti-discrimination law. Anti-discrimination laws tend to only be passed when they’re banning forms of discrimination the majority already opposes.
I literally cannot make it any more simple; women can run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds. Even though many women cannot actually do so, the statement is true.
That’s not a good analogy though. Cosmonaut isn’t just a translated term of astronaut. It’s different on purpose.
Just a PhD is specifically different from MD, even though both are doctors.
No their jobs aren’t as different, but it’s very much a definite prescriptive difference, one are people who went to space from the USSR/Russia, astronauts are American/European and Chinese spacefarers are taikonauts.
It opened in 1975 and was part of a broader movement to address the financial needs of women who faced barriers in obtaining credit and financial services from traditional banks.
There was enough of a need for this 50 years ago that it made literal capitalist financial interest to make it happen.
Financial freedom in a modern word can be privileged (but absolutely essential for actual survival) and groups (like women, ie half of humanity) can be denied the necessities. If a women needs a man’s signature to get a loan, have a credit card, or even open a banking account, they are not free from that man. And that (one aspect) really changed only in the 80s (slowly & with newer gens).
Saying some women had bank amounts in the 1700s is like saying “land of the free” in reference to USA (at any point in history actually).
Or saying how racism in USA ended with a (any) specific law.
The “meme” is still funny in comparing a basic necessity for a majority vs bcs ofc not a notable % of any human groups have been to space (even including billionaires).
If a women needs a man’s signature to get a loan, have a credit card, or even open a banking account, they are not free from that man. And that (one aspect) really changed only in the 80s (slowly & with newer gens).
If you read the article, you’d know that in general this was usually the case way farther back than the 70s.
Yes, there were more gaps but it’s far from what the meme implies.
The meme also implies that USSR women had access to space. Both ends of the meme are not a strictly accurate comparison, just a “funny” way of saying that women in USA didn’t have universal access to banking guaranteed by a country-wide law up until the space race.
I would also point out that it’s incredibly unlikely any women critical of the Party, or with husbands who were critical of the Party, were allowed to be astronauts.
So, I felt some context to demonstrate that American women had been banking for a hundred+ years by the time there were Soviet astronauts.
A bit like saying North Koreans have nuclear weapons while black ppl in USA are discriminated against.
While it is a fact, it’s also clear that the situation in USA is a bit better than 200 years ago whilst the average DPRKean does in fact not have access to a nuclear weapon.
I don’t think ppl on Lemmy would think no woman in USA had a bank account prior to the (19)70s. Just as they wouldn’t think USSR shipped millions of female tourists to space.
I don’t think ppl on Lemmy would think no woman in USA had a bank account prior to the (19)70s.
You have more faith than I do. Right now, someone is explaining to me in another thread how donald trump is actually part of a deep conspiracy with the Dems to keep elections electronic so they can both rig them…
People are really dumb.
And the link I posted does not at any point say that all women had access to all banking forever, simply that there is a lot of context that’s missed by claims like this, that come up reasonably frequently.
I also feel that technically, at least according to the source, my comment is correct.
As the piece notes:
Women could participate in the economy — including banking — in Colonial America.
To me, this meets the “American women could open a bank account” criteria but that’s just my opinion and one with which reasonable people can disagree.
Though, the piece’s source gets delightfully snarky about it:
Though a small percentage of all bank customers, women held accounts in many northeastern banks in the early national period, a fact that apparently has eluded business and women’s historians alike.
Your are indeed technically correct (but I maintain that as the worst kind of correct, who trusts bureaucrats?), but the added information that that section details as once/if women married, their finances, assets, bank accounts became their husbands.
So while unmarried and widowed women could do banking, meaning that women could - social pressure and expectations made it difficult to impossible for the majority of most women’s lives.
You are correct in the bar of “a certain subset of >1 women could open bank accounts” was true for, potentially the entire history of banking in the US/thirteen colonies. (When was the first settler bank set up in N. America? Probably a Spanish one in the Caribbean, but British people probably didn’t use that one.)
We are mostly in agreement, just drawing the line either when first crossed (fair and valid) or when all could cross (racial discrimination aside (and that’s a big aside)).
Salutations and respect to a fellow lover and encourager of persnicketiness.
but I maintain that as the worst kind of correct, who trusts bureaucrats?
Love it!
Yup, you make great points. I just think that if the comparator on the other side is “women in space” we’re not talking about a large percentage of the population. (Though, an admittedly fair perspective is the number of women as a share of the total people in space.)
https://femmefrugality.com/myth-busting-womens-banking/
It’s a funny myth but not true. Women were doing their own banking in America as far back as the 1700sm I’m not super up on my Soviet space programs but I think that’s a few years earlier.
Yes, and black Americans became fully equal citizens in 1868. /s
You can’t judge history and civil rights off of the exceptions or the ideas written on paper. I’m sorry. Acting like this is what the meme is talking about is just denying centuries of patriarchy in America.
The article literally says
Gee, I wonder why a very specific act had to be passed to deal with this “non existent” issue that was solved in the 1700s. Gee. Weird.
Just an absolute garbage article you linked. Seriously. Reconsider your ability to think critically if you can’t understand how much this article is trying to downplay patriarchy from this quote alone.
Women were still largely dependent on being married and dependent on their husband to have any form of banking well into the timeline the meme is referring to. That article is like saying “I couldn’t find a law specific to race in the Jim Crow South related to voting”.
I don’t mean to overuse the analogy of racial discrimination. But I feel like people don’t actually understand how discrimination and laws actually work in reality when it comes to patriarchy. So, I’m hoping you at least understand it for other historical contexts.
Laws aren’t written to be “X identity group can’t do Y”. And trying to analyze the actual material outcomes by only looking for laws like that is going to give you the results the article you linked came to.
Laws of discrimination are written to be vague enough that the powers of white supremacy and patriarchy are allowed to be enacted at individual levels on mass scale - without directly writing them down.
Edit: this was originally just the /s comment. But holy shit that article they linked was so bad and ahistorical I couldn’t stop editing. Seriously. Please learn to think about what you’re reading. Don’t just upvote a comment because they had a “source”.
Bless your heart.
The article explicitly says that many women faced barriers.
Similarly, many Soviet women were not astronauts.
Sometimes I wonder if people don’t read comments they reply to; or if more and more people seem entirely incapable of comprehending what they are reading.
You can’t say “Bless your heart” and then follow it up with not actually arguing anything. Nothing you stated is in contradiction to my comment.
My comment and the original comment (and article) are not even discussing the USSR. It’s irrelevant to what is being discussed. Bless your heart, you really tried to put words together. You tried. At least your username is fitting.
Maybe you forgot what post you’re in?
The meme, to which the original comment was responding:
Was my comment or even your original one debating the validity of when the USSR had women in space? June 16, 1963. No ones debating that.
The original article you linked and comment you made is what is being discussed by me mate. Why are you talking about the USSR in response to my comment that mentioned nothing of the sort. I’m disagreeing with your statement on women’s rights in America and the arguments made in the article. Do you think major legislation was passed in 1974 just for fun? To fix a problem that was fixed in the 1700s?
I know your brain hurts. You seem to be incapable of even understanding what you’re disagreeing with. Just stop mate. You’re embarrassing yourself.
What on Earth?
Yes. American women could open a bank account well before anyone ever went to space.
Maybe English isn’t your first language. But, if I said, women cannot run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds, it would be obviously false because many can.
If you’re demanding some percentage of women, well that’s a different claim and frankly I’d imagine the number of female cosmonauts was also seriously restricted (they and their partners better not have said anything naughty about the party.)
This doesn’t seem that confusing.
Yes, and some black people voted in the Jim Crow South. Like, I hope you can understand how ridiculous it would be for someone to argue about black people’s voting rights being uninhibited because of exceptions. But that is fundamentally what you are doing with women’s rights.
Dude. I don’t know how else to explain this to you except through analogy. You seem to have a literal mental block when it comes to understanding patriarchy.
This isn’t about a “certain percentage”. You are fundamentally looking at “the exceptions that prove the rule” and instead saying “no, actually these exceptions were not exceptions at all. They were the norm”.
Or you’re just being a “technically Andy” and you aren’t actually interested in having a discussion. You’re just interested in being “technically right”. If that’s all you want. Sure mate. You are right that some women had individual bank accounts in the 1700s. Is that all you want? Like, wtf, are you that incapable of actually discussing historical structures on a level beyond individual anecdotes? I never said that this was wrong. Your use of exceptions to reach a generalized conclusion on women’s rights for banking pre 1974 is was is wrong. It’s what is wrong with the article you linked.
You are just proving your ignorance of having any understanding of patriarchy with every response. You won’t actually be able to understand what my initial comment was talking about until you just admit your own ignorance to yourself.
Good luck mate. I hope you do some reading or something. I can’t help you understand through Internet comments alone.
You can apply some common sense though. Women opening bank accounts was not some fringe thing only available to a few in 1975. It was the norm. In a city, the vast majority of banks would be open to women. Maybe there was one old fuddy duddy bank that refused to do it. But the vast majority would.
This is how anti-discrimination laws always work. The only way an anti-discrimination law can pass is if the vast majority of the population is already onboard with it. Laws tend to be passed banning discrimination when the tolerant majority gets tired of putting up with the bullshit of a bigoted minority. Until that threshold is reached, the standard is always “let people and companies decide on their own.”
Jim Crow was defeated when the vast majority of the US population had come to the point where they believed racial discrimination was wrong. It was the rest of the society collectively telling white people in south “we’re tired of your shit.”
If most women in the US could not open a bank account in 1975, then the vast, vast majority of banks must not have been offering them accounts. The only way that would happen is if the vast majority of the population opposed women having bank accounts. And if that was the case, there would have never been the political will necessary to pass an anti-discrimination law. Anti-discrimination laws tend to only be passed when they’re banning forms of discrimination the majority already opposes.
I literally cannot make it any more simple; women can run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds. Even though many women cannot actually do so, the statement is true.
deleted by creator
They’re exactly zero Soviet Astronauts.
They are called Cosmonauts.
Dangit! Cosmonaut kept popping up into my head but I couldn’t be bothered to look up the difference.
Just to be double extra, Chinese astronauts are tiakonaughts.
Seriously? That’s cool, did not know about all these different translations/words etc. I’ve got to look into this, thanks!
Taikonauts*
There are not doctors in Germany either. Not were there any academics in the whole of Russia.
They’re called arzt. or Doktor. That’s not helpful, though.
That’s not a good analogy though. Cosmonaut isn’t just a translated term of astronaut. It’s different on purpose.
Just a PhD is specifically different from MD, even though both are doctors.
No their jobs aren’t as different, but it’s very much a definite prescriptive difference, one are people who went to space from the USSR/Russia, astronauts are American/European and Chinese spacefarers are taikonauts.
Just one random counter example: wiki/First Women’s Bank (New York):
There was enough of a need for this 50 years ago that it made literal capitalist financial interest to make it happen.
Financial freedom in a modern word can be privileged (but absolutely essential for actual survival) and groups (like women, ie half of humanity) can be denied the necessities. If a women needs a man’s signature to get a loan, have a credit card, or even open a banking account, they are not free from that man. And that (one aspect) really changed only in the 80s (slowly & with newer gens).
Saying some women had bank amounts in the 1700s is like saying “land of the free” in reference to USA (at any point in history actually).
Or saying how racism in USA ended with a (any) specific law.
The “meme” is still funny in comparing a basic necessity for a majority vs bcs ofc not a notable % of any human groups have been to space (even including billionaires).
If you read the article, you’d know that in general this was usually the case way farther back than the 70s.
Yes, there were more gaps but it’s far from what the meme implies.
The meme also implies that USSR women had access to space. Both ends of the meme are not a strictly accurate comparison, just a “funny” way of saying that women in USA didn’t have universal access to banking guaranteed by a country-wide law up until the space race.
To each their own.
I would also point out that it’s incredibly unlikely any women critical of the Party, or with husbands who were critical of the Party, were allowed to be astronauts.
So, I felt some context to demonstrate that American women had been banking for a hundred+ years by the time there were Soviet astronauts.
Exactly.
A bit like saying North Koreans have nuclear weapons while black ppl in USA are discriminated against.
While it is a fact, it’s also clear that the situation in USA is a bit better than 200 years ago whilst the average DPRKean does in fact not have access to a nuclear weapon.
I don’t think ppl on Lemmy would think no woman in USA had a bank account prior to the (19)70s. Just as they wouldn’t think USSR shipped millions of female tourists to space.
You have more faith than I do. Right now, someone is explaining to me in another thread how donald trump is actually part of a deep conspiracy with the Dems to keep elections electronic so they can both rig them…
People are really dumb.
And the link I posted does not at any point say that all women had access to all banking forever, simply that there is a lot of context that’s missed by claims like this, that come up reasonably frequently.
It’s a good link, busting the myth clearly and with good sources.
However:
But that’s still a century before female cosmonauts, so I’m just being pernicketty really.
I love and encourage persnicketiness!
I also feel that technically, at least according to the source, my comment is correct.
As the piece notes:
To me, this meets the “American women could open a bank account” criteria but that’s just my opinion and one with which reasonable people can disagree.
Though, the piece’s source gets delightfully snarky about it:
Your are indeed technically correct (but I maintain that as the worst kind of correct, who trusts bureaucrats?), but the added information that that section details as once/if women married, their finances, assets, bank accounts became their husbands.
So while unmarried and widowed women could do banking, meaning that women could - social pressure and expectations made it difficult to impossible for the majority of most women’s lives.
You are correct in the bar of “a certain subset of >1 women could open bank accounts” was true for, potentially the entire history of banking in the US/thirteen colonies. (When was the first settler bank set up in N. America? Probably a Spanish one in the Caribbean, but British people probably didn’t use that one.)
We are mostly in agreement, just drawing the line either when first crossed (fair and valid) or when all could cross (racial discrimination aside (and that’s a big aside)).
Salutations and respect to a fellow lover and encourager of persnicketiness.
Love it!
Yup, you make great points. I just think that if the comparator on the other side is “women in space” we’re not talking about a large percentage of the population. (Though, an admittedly fair perspective is the number of women as a share of the total people in space.)
I’d foolishly overlooked the considerations of what kind of line was drawn on the space side. That’s a really good point.
Thanks for the polite, pernicketty, chat.
Likewise!
Honestly, for what it’s worth, folks like you are what give me hope for the Fediverse. So, thank you.
If there were no uniform laws, which there were not, women could not bank