2024 marks 50 years that women have been able to have a credit card in their name. What the fuck, you say? I know! Read on…
Credit cards, in some form or another, have been around about 150 years. Before that, it was not unheard of for general stores to offer lines of credit to some of their more well-known and regular customers, a practice that has evidence going back centuries. Towards the end of the 1800s and into the 1900s, carrying a balance with a merchant was becoming a thing, but it was a store-to-store deal only. Some did it, others didn’t. (I mean, Hattie did for Lucas McCain, but only because he was an established and loyal customer, and probably also because he was the town badass.) By the 1920s, Charge-A-Plates and other types of credit cards were quite popular, but they worked only at the issuing establishment, usually a hotel or a department store. Airlines had some, too, partly because flying wasn't cheap and they were trying to attract customers...
But any money-making idea that cripples people is worth spreading, and by the end of the 1950s, most Americans had embraced the concept of buying now and paying later. Still, it took the Bank of America in California in 1958 to launch the BankAmericacard, the first general-purpose credit card that could be used wherever it was accepted. This credit card also introduced a key feature of modern credit cards: unlike with the then popular Diners Club card, customers could carry a balance into the following month, provided they paid the amount of interest accumulated. By 1966, the practice had become commonplace and was now growing outside of California - many states had licensed the BankAmericard. In 1970, BankAmericard was rebranded as Visa. Yay! It had finally become fashionable to carry a personal debt…
To that point, though, women, couldn’t own a credit card. Even as late as the mid-1970s, women were put through a major freaking ordeal when applying for a credit card. At first, married women were only issued cards under their husband’s name, and single women needed a male family member to act as co-signer. Even if a woman was able to make payments on her sole income, she could still be denied credit, effectively crippling her financial prospects. In a major step toward gender equality, the Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that assigning more financial power to men than women simply on the basis of sex was unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The case laid the groundwork for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, which stated that people could not be denied credit based on gender, religion, or race. And now everyone can have a credit card, whether they have income or not. Banks don’t give a shit, just fill out the application…
Today, the average American carries between $6000 and $8000 in debt, depending on the source...
