It entitled workers covered by employer insurance to 12 weeks of paid leave for events such as the birth of a child or to care for an ill family member. The Family and Medical Leave Act was enacted in 1993.
That changed with the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988. Just over 30 years ago, women still couldn’t get a business loan without a co-sign from a male relative. Recent times have seen more measures to address lingering inequalities.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 also prohibits discrimination against applicants who receive federal income assistance. In 1978, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act aimed to stop employers from firing women once they became pregnant and ensure that their insurance policies could not exclude pregnant employees.Īmid this wave of legislation came another crucial milestone: ensuring that lenders couldn’t deny credit to anyone based on their sex, marital status, race, national origin or religion. In 1974, Title VII prohibited employers from refusing to hire anyone, fire them or create an atmosphere of harassment based on sex, race, religion or national origin. Two amendments to the Civil Rights Act went further to protect women from gender discrimination. Title IX’s mandate for equal funding of men’s and women’s athletics not only had a major impact on women’s participation in sports programs, but the act is credited with reducing high school dropout rates for girls and increasing the ranks of women earning college degrees. Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 addressed this issue, barring any federally-funded educational institutions from discriminating based on sex. The so-called “second wave of feminism” in the 1960s and ’70s expanded wins in legal status matters further into the realms of politics, education, work and more.įinancial independence and the ability to earn a good living are deeply intertwined with access to educational opportunities. Kennedy, amended the Depression-era legislation to address gender-based pay disparity directly by mandating equal pay for equal work. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, signed by President John F. More significant progress came in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage, affecting many women working low-paying hourly jobs. The First Women’s Bank of Tennessee opened in 1919, employing and serving women only. Mary Gage, fed up with having to rely on men to invest her money, opened a women’s-only stock exchange to trade railroad stocks in 1880. Meanwhile, small victories were adding up around the country: California began allowing women to take out loans in 1862. Not only did this raise salient arguments around the exclusion of married women from such opportunities, but as these homesteaders were paying taxes on their land, the outcry against taxation without representation fueled the coming women’s suffrage movement. The Homestead Act of 1862 presented promising opportunities to independent (single, divorced, widowed or deserted) women, allowing more than 100,000 of them to acquire 160 acres of federal land in their own name. The 1800sĬolonial economic models based on relatively static land ownership eventually became an awkward fit for a rapidly industrializing capitalist society in which wealth moved quickly.īit by bit, states in the 1830s and ’40s began passing married women’s property acts that gave them ownership and control over their own estates and wages. Outside of marriage, economic survival was virtually impossible. Women in the 1700s were the legal property of their husbands, had no rights of ownership and could not control their own earnings. The status quo for women’s rights that persisted for much of our early history was imported from British colonial law when America was in its infancy. Important: 7 Things Every Woman Should Know About Social Security The 1700s Here’s a look back at the history of women’s financial independence.įind Out More: How Single Moms Can Build Generational Wealth The rights to these functions, however, have been hard-fought and won over hundreds of years. Having a job, getting a paycheck, putting your money in the bank and controlling how it gets spent: These are basic financial functions that are easy for many women to take for granted in America today.
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