
Crashing the economy for feminism | Lending money to women, no matter the risk under the ECOA
I want to bring light to a pocket in history, American history, pertaining to the ever so commonly quoted period when women were 'given the right to bank accounts in 1972', and pull it up to 2008 to try to paint a picture, and highlight the impact of feminism.
Women had access to the economy for centuries, long before 1972
Feminists are very quick to point out that women were not allowed bank accounts until 1972.
Technical details aside:
- 1972 was the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, passed by Nixon
- 1974 was the ECOA - Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which of course
- Was not an act to legalise women having bank accounts, women always had that
- The ECOA, was to make it illegal for banks to NOT favour single female clients looking for mortgage loans, amongst other credit borrowing opportunities
- Women were and have been at the forefront of trade and finance for centuries, with men being behind in fact
- Women invested and funded colonialism
- Women maintained demand pressure on global trade for luxury consumption, causing famines
Women have always dominated trade and finance, over men
- Colonial maritime financing & empire (1600s~): Unmarried women and widows (feme soles) held full legal capacity to sign contracts, buy debt bonds and fund joint-stock colonial shipping routes. They were the majority of fractional investors buying bottomry loans and shares in chartered colonial trading companies, for luxury goods that they were the primary consumers of (e.g. tea and textiles). High male mortality repeatedly concentrated liquid estate capital into the hands of surviving widows who reinvested in overseas trade. Naval impressments during times of frequent war and catastrophic mortality rates, systematically excluded the vast majority of men from such ventures.
- Commercial monopoly (In Asia, incl. Siam 17th century): European envoys recorded that domestic retail trade, currency negotiation, credit issuance, and market exchanges were managed almost entirely by women. Women held sole control over household treasuries, local credit pools, and market pricing, acting as the primary economic negotiators. Meanwhile, the Phrai Corvee system made commoner men dedicate 6 months out of each and every year for military service and physically hard slave labour. By mandating that they be soldiers and labor units, they were legally barred from running permanent market enterprises.
- Early Corporate Equity Markets (1900-1930s): By the 1920s, women made up over 50% of individual shareholders in AT&T, providing the patient equity that built national telecom networks. Female retail investors owned over 40% of individual stock certificates in U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, and the Pennsylvania Railroad by 1920.. In contrast, men comprised the vast majority of workers dying in heavy industrial labor, coal mining, and steel manufacturing before building portfolios.
- Mid-Century Wall Street Public Ownership (1950s): In 1956, 51.6% of all individual shareholders in publicly traded U.S. companies were women. Female investors held significant collective voting leverage across public utilities and consumer goods through dividend-focused portfolios. In contrast, men bore direct exposure to business failures, employment risks, and economic downturns as mandatory primary earners. Men faced legal requirements to financially maintain dependents under penal non-support laws, reducing liquid cash for equity speculation. The vast majority of money that a 2nd, female income consists of, is spent on higher standard of living, as opposed to savings.
- Legal Immunity vs. Debtor's Prison under Common Law Coverture
When did women get access to the economy? Did they ever have less access than men?
The Financial Revolution (1690s–1720s): As soon as joint-stock corporations, government debt bonds, and the Bank of England were founded in the 1690s, women were active, independent financial players. Bank of England transfer ledgers show that by 1720, women constituted 20% of all Bank of England shareholders and held roughly 10% to 15% of total capital stock.
As mentioned before wrt Colonial maritime era and the commercial monopoly women have enjoyed even in Asia (incl. Siam), women have gotten access to the economy, as soon as those doors were opened for civilisation.
Women were on the forefront of capital, investment, and trade from the very birth of financial markets in the 1600s. There is nothing presently to suggest anything of the contrary. The only time women get claimed to have been discriminated against, was when it came to the evaluation of their default position - almost an allegory for how women fail upwards. Speculating on women's ability to make good on their payments, was considered discrimination, and THAT is what the ECOA, a feminist law, was put in place to stop.
Who the ECOA was for: how tokens are spent, and redlines are drawn
It was for women, and women only. I am not joking.
In 1974, the equal credit opportunity act, was a single 'issue' piece of legislation to make it illegal to question women's payment capability for things like mortgage loans.
The feminists and organisations responsible were:
- Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-NY)
- Congresswoman Margaret Heckler (R-MA)
- Congresswoman Leonor Sullivan (D-MO)
- National Organization for Women (NOW)
- National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC)
- The Center for Women Policy Studies (CWPS)
Let us contrast this with what black people had to go through.
Black Americans were subjected to explicit, state-sponsored spatial and financial blockades designed to deny them homeownership altogether.
While the 1974 ECOA focused on protecting women’s earnings and eliminating male co-signer requirements, Black men were facing the legacy and ongoing execution of FHA Redlining.
For women, the 'barrier' was individual underwriting bias. A woman with a solid salary, savings, or alimony was turned away or forced to bring a male co-signer because lenders discounted her income or assumed she would leave the workforce.
For black men, the barrier was geographic and collateral-based. Under the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) guidelines established in the 1930s, federal appraisers drew literal red lines around Black neighborhoods, categorizing them as "Type D: Hazardous."
A Black man could have a high salary, zero debt, and a 50% cash down payment, but banks were legally encouraged by federal FHA manuals to reject his mortgage application simply because the property was located in or near a redlined zone. That actual discrimination, came in 2nd, to women. Nothing has changed about that dynamic. Black people are tokens for feminists. Just as abolitionism was a token for temperance activists and feminists.
- A bank was legally forbidden from asking a white woman if she planned to have children or requiring her husband to co-sign.
- That same bank remained free to deny a black person a mortgage based on racial redlining maps. Despite the 1968 fair housing act, redlining still existed well into the 1970s including this period, so the threat was very visibly there. In fact, the ECOA, was one of the conceivable ways people would counter this discrimination, however, feminists opted to make it for themselves instead of actually oppressed peoples.
This was only changed after backlash, in 2 years, but make no mistake, the fundamental purpose of this act, was for women, nobody else.
From the ECOA in 74, to the housing crash in 08
The path from the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 to the global financial collapse of 2008 illustrates the Law of feminist Consequences in modern political economy.
1. The death of risk averse underwriting
While wrought with prejudice against black people, prior to 1974, mortgage lending operated under strict, risk-averse constraints. Lenders evaluated applicants through pass/fail barriers based on conservative criteria: high down payments, stable single-breadwinner income streams, and pristine credit profiles.
ECOA, paired with the legal doctrine of Disparate Impact established in subsequent decades, transformed this dynamic. When regulators began treating statistical disparities in loan approvals as prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination, turning down high-risk applicants became a severe legal liability for banks. To avoid federal lawsuits, regulatory audits, and civil penalties, financial institutions were forced to abandon strict pass/fail rejections.
2. The Invention of "Risk-Based Pricing" and the ARM
Banks could not legally say "no" to non-traditional, lower-margin, or single-earner applicants without risking regulatory retaliation. To manage this non-negotiable risk, the credit market invented a work-around: risk-based pricing.
Instead of rejecting an applicant with a high debt-to-income ratio, banks approved them using flexible, high-risk instruments. These were called Adjustable-Rate Mortgages (ARMs) featuring low introductory "teaser" rates. These low teaser rates allowed single-income households, including single mothers, to qualify on paper for loans they could not otherwise afford.
However, the risk was not eliminated; it was merely deferred. Lenders priced the underlying volatility into exploding interest rates, high origination fees, and reset clauses scheduled to trigger two to three years down the line.
3. Wall Street Securitization and the Speculative Trap
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wall Street investment banks recognized that the federal mandate to expand credit had created a massive, endless supply of mortgages. Investment firms bought millions of these flexible, government-incentivized subprime loans, bundled them into Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), got credit rating agencies to stamp them as "AAA," and sold them to global investors.
This financialization unleashed a tidal wave of capital into real estate, creating a speculative home-flipping frenzy. Middle-class investors and speculators used 0%-down ARMs to buy multiple properties, driving housing prices to unsustainable heights.
4. The Unraveling
When housing prices peaked in 2006 and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, the low-teaser ARMs began resetting. Monthly payments spiked by 40% to 100%.
- The Speculators: Real estate flippers holding zero-equity investment properties executed strategic defaults, walking away from millions in defaulted debt and gutting Wall Street balance sheets.
- The Single Earners: Single-income households trapped in subprime ARMs lacked the financial buffer of a second earner to absorb the sudden payment increases, suffering catastrophic foreclosure rates.
The Structural Reality
The 1974 ECOA achieved its primary objective: it forced open the doors of credit access to women. But by stripping lenders of the legal ability to reject high-risk borrowers, it incentivized the financial sector to invent high-risk, floating-rate subprime products. When Wall Street financialized those products, it exacerbated the problem, and made it blow up and impact the entire world.
Some potentially related financial catastrophes/issues
- The Savings and Loan (S&L) Crisis (Late 1980s – Early 1990s)
- The Student Loan and Higher Education Debt Crisis (2010s – Present)
- The 1998 Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) & Emerging Market Debt Stress
- The 1990s Microfinance & Subprime Consumer Credit Bubble: During the late 1980s and 1990s, credit card companies, retail stores, and alternative lenders used the 1974 ECOA framework to aggressively expand unsecured revolving credit lines targeted specifically at women and female-headed households.
- The 2010 Andhra Pradesh Microfinance Crisis: female-targeted credit push completely collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of women and single mothers defaulted on their loans, leading to a mass borrower strike, government intervention, the total insolvency of major microfinance banks, and a global re-evaluation of gender-based credit targets.