Like FDA approval of the pill a decade earlier, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act “changed the trajectory of American women’s lives” overnight. A new Smithsonian exhibit documents the fight.
Fifty years ago, women in the U.S. were not allowed to apply for credit in their own names and it was legal to deny someone credit because she was a woman, married or pregnant. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 enabled women to get credit cards or a mortgage without a co-signer, making it a pivotal milestone for women’s financial independence.
The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum (SAWHM) is commemorating ECOA’s passage with an online exhibit, “We Do Declare Women’s Voices on Independence,” in the lead up to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (to be celebrated July 4, 2026).
Oct. 28, 2024—the 50th anniversary of ECOA being signed into law by President Gerald Ford—fell just a week ahead of this year’s presidential election, considered by many to be a referendum on women’s rights in a political climate still reeling from the revocation of Roe v. Wade. That critical landmark for women’s autonomy was overturned by the Dobbs decision in 2022, one year short of reaching its own half-century observance.
By focusing on women’s independence through the lens of economic power over the last 50 years, the Smithsonian exhibit sidesteps more contentious social issues and hones in on another essential factor in women’s ability to achieve freedom, security and power: financial independence.
The testimonies of powerful women entrepreneurs celebrating ECOA’s anniversary underscore its role in paving the way for their own successes and their commitment to extending opportunity to women who have yet to yield its benefits.
- Fashion mogul and philanthropist Tory Burch, who leads her namesake billion dollar business and foundation providing millions of dollars in funding to empower women entrepreneurs, recalled her mother’s elation at seeing her own name embossed on her very first credit card in the 1970s.
- Superstar athlete and entrepreneur Venus Willams partnered with Cameron Brink of the Los Angeles Sparks and personal finance company SoFi to further advance women’s financial independence with 50 (fifty) $500,000 awards through its Give Her Credit campaign, timed to commemorate and perpetuate “the accomplishments made in women’s financial independence since the passage of the ECOA.”
Like FDA approval of the pill a decade earlier, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act “changed the trajectory of American women’s lives” overnight.
The SAWHM’s intentional approach to chronicling the effects of this transformative legislation, as related by director Elizabeth Babcock in a recent interview with Ms., is to give attention to the stories of individual women—not necessarily glass ceiling-breaking women, but “everyday women” who have shaped “their communities, their homes, their places of faith” and, in doing so, have “acted collectively to shape American history.”
The oral history project at the center of the exhibit features four women’s stories, with three relating to women’s banks, which were “were popping up all over the U.S. after ECOA became law.”
One oral history features a woman who was president of a women’s bank, another highlights a woman who worked at a women’s bank, and another gives voice to a woman who got a loan from one. The fourth oral history features ECOA crusader Emily Card, “whose name is … synonymous with equal credit rights for American women.”
Babcock told me women were legally allowed to get credit in the mid-’70s, but in actual practice, still were not able to access it. People founded women’s banks so that women could not only access capital but establish financial literacy through classes or access to advice, places where “they could have conversations with bankers who weren’t going to make fun of them or treat them like they were stupid.”
The oral history format “allows us to take women’s ideas and insights seriously,” said Smithsonian curator Rachel Seidman, who conceived of the project. It can make visible women’s roles in shaping the history and identity of the country by including their perspectives and experiences.
“So much policy gets designed without ever asking the people whose lives it is meant to impact what they think needs to happen or change, or what they think would make the biggest difference,” said Seidman. Including women’s voices is associated with improved policy outcomes as well as a more complete understanding of history.
People founded women’s banks so that women could not only access capital but establish … places where ‘they could have conversations with bankers who weren’t going to make fun of them or treat them like they were stupid.’
Elizabeth Babcock
One of the central goals of the SAWHM, according to Babcock, “is to advance scholarship and historical understanding amongst the public.” Since only 10 percent of content in history books is about women, one aspiration is to fill those gaps by illustrating the multiplicity of women’s experiences in their own voices where they have been absent.
“Emily Card’s story is illustrative of how someone who played a major role in getting legislation passed can be omitted from the story that gets told going forward,” said Seidman, “because she’s not the senator. She’s not the congressperson.” But Card, who worked as a congressional fellow, was “this incredible linchpin between the activists and the people who had the power to make the change actually happen,” a role known to academics as a policy entrepreneur.
According to Seidman, Card organized with the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women (NOW), and every woman staffer she could identify on the Hill, to convince former Sen. Bill Brock (R-Tenn.) to leverage his position on the banking committee to advance the federal legislation she helped write, the “bill to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status in the granting of credit,” known as ECOA.
Card said she was inspired to advance the ECOA after seeing an article in Ms. magazine on the newsstand, “What the 93rd Congress can do for you,” and reaching out to its author, Ellen Sudow. She went on to write a weekly column on finance for Ms. According to Seidman, Card said that Gloria Steinem herself had told her that they had not been thinking about money as a women’s topic before then.
The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had paved the way for the passage of ECOA, and her replacement by Amy Coney Barrett, who soon after voted to overturn Roe, has led some to question whether further rollbacks to women’s long-established rights, including in the financial sphere, might be in the offing.
Historians and education experts agree that teaching women’s history is essential to maintaining and advancing women’s progress in society.
