Before passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in October 1974, most women had difficulty obtaining credit without a male cosigner. In the 1960s, as women increasingly entered the work force, they demanded individual access to consumer credit. The 1968 Consumer Credit Protection Act paved the way for ECOA by providing consumers access to their credit reports and by requiring lenders to reveal actual interest rates.
As late as 1968, women still were denied credit access. In 1972 the National Commission on Consumer Credit held hearings. At Congresswoman Bella Abzug's (D., N.Y.) insistence, that commission included testimony about the need for women's credit access but did not recommend federal action, and none was taken.
As a Senate Fellow in 1973 serving Senator Bill Brock (R., Tenn.), this author set out to create a legislative environment to introduce and pass ECOA. With Senator Brock as chief sponsor, the act passed the Senate in July 1973 and went to the House. The act became law in October 1974; it prohibited discrimination in credit access on the basis of sex or marital status, and later was amended to include race, religion, national origin, or age.
Statistics show that enormous changes resulted from ECOA. Until 1970 women's mortgage activity wasn't tracked; now women are a major force in the home-buying market. In 1972 women-owned businesses constituted 4.6 percent of all small businesses. Now that number is nearing 40 percent. Of those, 75 percent are started with women's personal credit. The next step is to ensure women adequate access to capital so that they won't have to rely solely on credit cards to underwrite their entrepreneurial dreams.
Emily Card
See also
Banking and Credit.
