There are an awful lot of people that don’t really care about history, perhaps because they are simple- minded, perhaps because they are lazy, or perhaps because they believe that life is lived in the present and not in the past. It would appear that nowadays women in America, seem to have just about all the rights as men do, along with the fact that we do so find that at least on a legislative basis, women definitely have the same rights as men do when it comes to banking and credit worthiness, though that has not always been the case.
In 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was ratified, in which that act prohibited “…. creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age…” This thus meant that before that 1974 legislative act, that banking and credit issuing facilities could, and in fact did, routinely deny women the fair access to having their own bank account, without the expressed authorization, for instance, of their husband. This did not mean that every woman was denied that access, but what it did signify was that such access to banking for women was at the sole discretion of that banking institution.
As might be imagined, those that do not have access to their own money or to their own credit, cannot actually be free and independent. This makes those without such access, at the mercy then of those that control that access, and therefore places men, or those of that influence, into power positions, which by their very nature in the way that they are thus utilized, discriminatory. While this news that such financial discrimination against women did occur, may seem remarkable to people of the 21st century, this is indeed the way that it so was.
Fortunately, we live in a more enlightened age, which thus provides for women as well as for others that have historically been discriminated against, the legislative Acts that serve to provide them with the same solid foundation that other privileged Americans, as in white males, have basically had as their birthright, from the inception of this nation. We need to keep in mind that there are a multitude of ways to imprison people, that don’t really involve locking them up – and one of those ways is to make it so that their education, or their opportunity, or where they live, or their employment, or their access to money, be restricted because of who and what they are.
To be free and to be at liberty, means not only having a voice which can profess whatsoever that it so desires to say, but also to have the fair access to opportunity, growth, and monetary rewards, which are often a requirement to live then a good life. Those then, that are denied those very things, and live their lives in a way and manner, in which what they so want to accomplish or access, is actually controlled by a male entity or institution, qualified or not, good or bad, are definitely not free or at liberty.