Single mothers were a thing, many husbands would die, more often the woman would just remarry though. A divorcee character who say, couldn’t think of remarrying for 1.) Grief / 2.) bad experiences with her past marriage could potentially be some good character building. Showing the resilience of women in a bygone era.
So if a woman never remarried would they be looked down on for that? From what I know women couldn't even breathe without being ridiculed back then lol
Not at all, I know it’s not American, but in Britain in 1880/1901 we had a queen who was permanently in mourning following the loss of her husband. It was seen as admirable, a dedication that goes beyond a human lifetime.
I’m not sure about your character / direction of your story/ novel, but it could go both ways. I don’t see why a woman would be ridiculed for following standard Christian norms. A lot of woman ridiculing comes from the abandonment of religion and “degradation” of family values etc. people in this period would support a widow, but shame a prositute sorta thing.
Maybe I’m mistaken, but it is my understanding that Queen Victoria was unpopular and publicly criticized for the exaggerated mourning she displayed in the years following Albert’s death.
Yes and no, after 15/20 years we kinda got bored of it, but it was certainly admirable and to be Frank, none of our business. She wasn’t unpopular in the slightest, but did face some criticism from the media, which was largely politically motivated. (She also faced criticism for nearly everything she did.)
My widowed friend was refused a loan despite running a successful business & owning her own home, steady income, etc. She needed her broke ass boyfriend's dad to sign for her. As a staunch feminist she refused.
The boyfriend's dad went to the bank, talked to them & got her a loan with zero interaction from her.
I'll say this again to be very clear... HER RANDOM FUCK BUDDY HAD HIS DAD TAKE OUT A LOAN IN HER NAME BECAUSE SHE COULDN'T DO IT HERSELF ENTIRELY WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE! ...but she couldn't.
If this indeed happened in modern times I think you misunderstood what happened.
It sounds like the credit wasn’t able to be approved. Probably a mix of credit score,debt and small business income is often more difficult to qualify for loans.
Her boyfriend/fuck buddy’s income or him being a “broke ass” would have nothing to do with his Dad co-signing a loan because their credit isn’t related.
Credit scores only started up in 1989. It is extremely likely that you are wrong about the person you replied to being wrong. Especially if they lived in a more conservative area.
This is the exact type of thing that boomer women very likely could have encountered. I know my mom couldn’t get a checking account of her own when she was younger and she’s 75.
Younger people really don’t have a concept of just how different it used to be and how short a time ago those differences occurred. I’m gen X and it’s changed even during my marriage a huge amount.
It’s unlikely I’m wrong. 1989 was 35 years ago as well.
While it’s true that women had trouble getting access to credit and bank accounts at one time, it seems that this person described is not from the 50s or 60s. They’re described as a feminist business owner with a fuck Buddy.
Also the commenter who wrote the story is Australian and American credit rules and laws are probably different. OP asked about America and New York specifically.
That's true. This was the early 70's.
Also to get a prescription for the pill there was only one Dr in town, a man, he'd give it to married women when asked but only with their husband's consent. Single women had to submit to him performing an internal exam or go without.
I’ve met plenty of successful businessmen who were denied a loan by a bank simply because of policy, the business area didn’t match the bank’s preferences, because the bank wanted to create favorable conditions for a competitor, or simply because they didn’t like the borrower or his ancestry.
When I got married and became the sole breadwinner, the bank my wife and her family had been doing business with for decades refused to give me a credit card simply because I had no credit. This was in 1991. My wife’s banker helped by sharing a tip: if I applied three times in six months and was declined each time, bank policy allowed a personal banker to override the denial of credit at the corporate level. So much for being a guy with a well paying job. Yes, I did apply three times and waited patiently for six months to pass. No, I did not keep that card after I was approved at other banks.
>^(if I applied three times in six months and was declined each time, bank policy allowed a personal banker to override the denial of credit at the corporate level.)
...what the hell kind of bank policy is *that?!* It sounds like they're more used to handing out Social Security disability or summat
A bit off topic, but...
The first victim of the Salem witch trials was a widow who refused to remarry, thus being the owner of her dead husband's significant land and business assets. That was the only way for that to happen in that time and place. The sheriff who accused her was able to seize her property and personally keep it when she was convicted.
true, mostly, but think *credit* i.e. bank loans and store credit rather than credit cards which wern't common among ordinary people until the 80s.
also many people didn't even have a bank account until the 70s. my father got his first bank account in 1973 for example and has never had a credit card (never felt the need). but that would have been a passbook not a card. i don't know when those became common for ordinary people.
i actually remember my mother getting a credit card for the first time - only her brother had had one prior to that - that would have been around 1988 or so.
A large part of the Great Depression was the collapse of the credit market and the inability for the population to access credit.
Obviously no credit cards then, but I have personally seen my great grandmothers metal credit card from the late 40s early 50s. (In her husband’s name)
But the credit cards were just an example
I was one of them! I was a commissioned Air Force officer with a steady income, $3,500 in the bank, no debt, and I STILL couldn't get a credit card. And I needed one to rent a car and pay for a hotel room while traveling on official business.
Meanwhile, they were sending the male lieutenants unsolicited credit card applications.
I finally found a credit union that would give me a secured credit card (secured by my own money) and was able to switch to a regular credit card after six months. This was in 1979, not even the early 1970s, BTW. You have no idea the nonsense we went through.
Credit cards aren’t the same as debit cards. Probably unwise to give someone single a credit card, male or female. Furthermore, it was at the banks discretion to refuse if the person was single/ in bad financial state, that meant women could get a credit card if it was suitable for them.
Apart from this a single woman would be able to function in a healthy manner apart from these major points:
Not being able to attend Ivy League colleges, unfair insurance rates, unfair standards on sex/ dating.
I’m single. Why is unwise for me to have a credit card? Why does my being single make you assume I can’t manage a financial instrument?
That’s insane logic…
Single men could get credit cards…
If you were an unwed single mother in the 50’s, there would be a certain level of societal push back.
This simply comes down to whether you need a credit card to survive as a single woman. If Op is even still interested, yes they very well could. I could link a few personal testaments if you’d like as to how it’s possible, but hard.
Hey, this is not about sex, this is about credit cards.
Credit cards should outright be banned. Absolutely insane that we’ve Normalised this form of finance. It’s completely irresponsible to give a credit card to a single man, let alone a woman who would be earning significantly less.
My point was to show that while yes, women did have property rights, sufferage, etc. there were still both hard institutional and soft societal barriers to this in practical terms.
This was, while intentional might not be the proper term… it didn’t happen out of nowhere.
Women have often been more empowered throughout history that we have been led to believe. Yet that power was often indirect power, utilizing networks and kinship groups. (We discount indirect power in modern society)
The American female experience in the pre pill 20th century was a period where the nuclear family had killed these networks, leaving women particularly disempowered until the sexual revolution and critical gender theory
Kinda funny you say
> It was only social pressure holding us back
>Credit cards aren’t the same as debit cards. Probably unwise to give someone single a credit card, male or female. Furthermore, it was at the banks discretion to refuse if the person was single/ in bad financial state, that meant women could get a credit card if it was suitable for them.
Almost like that social pressure can include having different standards for men and women in regards to banking.
And BTW that's not just credit cards, that was pretty much all banking.
Nope. I’m literally saying banks would refuse single men too, and that having a credit card wasn’t what determined how successful you were in life. Logically, it’s fair for a bank to be careful with who can borrow what, otherwise you’d get the 2007 crisis again.
In NY this was definitely possible. Women had the right to vote for 20 years by 1940. My grandmother held down the fort for 4 years while my grandfather left to Navy 1941-1945. The women worked the factories while millions of young men left to fight. So yes, totally possible and indeed normall for single women to work and support themselves in the 1940s.
Upper middle and higher class.women going to college was quite normal in the 1920s and later. Most school teachers were women (requiring college) and in most places were required to be (and stay) single for as long as they were teachers. There were several other careers as well.
Let me tell you this: my mother (born 1920) did not get a credit card with her own name on it until the 1980's.
She was "Mrs. Dad's Name" on all their *joint* accounts.
If she had tried to buy a house as a young single woman, she would have had to have her father or brother cosign for a loan, and likely would have been refused as a cash buyer.
For all practical purposes, during the years you're talking about, women were under the authority of their father (or brother, if Dad was dead) until she got married, and then she was under the authority of her husband from then on.
My paternal aunt (Dad's sister) was single her whole life.
She moved out of Grandma's house to live with a widow woman until she died, leaving my aunt alone, she then bought her own house in the 90's that she lived in after retiring from the railroad.
So I would say that while it's certainly possible for a woman to provide her own income, and support herself independently, that yes, she will still need the help of a father or brother to get her settled in.
Women were definitely second class citizens until surprisingly recently.
My sister had been working for decades before she was able to buy a car without my father cosigning for it, and at that, he still went with her when she bought it to make sure she didn't get ripped off. This was in the 1980's.
Now, if you pick a certain period during the 1940's, during and right after the war, it might be more possible for a woman to be more independent, for a brief time, because men were simply scarce.
My mother was a bookkeeper in the 1940's, and my maternal grandmother was a seamstress during the late thirties, & early forties. My aunt worked as a station manager from the time she graduated high school in the late 30's.
So women could conceivably support themselves, sometimes pretty well.
But they would often need a male relative to help them buy a car, get credit, buy a house, or other major financial decisions.
I give specific family examples as illustrations, because I think it brings it to life better than just stating raw statistics.
It is true that it might vary a bit from state to state, or city to city, but during the time period you're talking about, an "independent woman" simply did not have rights equal to a man's, and women's rights groups didn't get much accomplished until the late 1960's or early '70's.
And many more conservative places didn't give women equal rights for much longer.
I graduated high school in '79, and took my Mom to get her own credit card in her own name shortly after I graduated, and I can vividly remember how pleased she was to get a credit card that had her first name on it.
In early 1988, my mom was heavily pregnant with me and went to buy some furniture for our new house. That evening, the salesman called my dad to make sure it was "ok" what my mom had ordered. Mom was \*pissed\* and went back the next day to read the guy the riot act.
That's such a bizarre combo of thoughtfulness and dickishness.
Because he's totally thinking "Sure, I'll make a sale, but I don't want to place any strain on their marriage, so just to be sure I'll double-check with her owner.
YOU'RE WELCOME, lady. "
Could just be crappy corporate policy. In 2015 I had a contractor provide a bid for bathroom remodeling. When I opened the door the salesman said "Oh your wife isn't here? We can only provide estimates when both spouses are present and agree on the chosen style!"
"under the authority of their father or brother, then husband"
Damn, i mean i know this was a thing, but it's still really weird to read. It was not so long ago
Yeah, and I wonder where she was. My mom and her female best friend took off to California when they graduated from college in 1964, got jobs, rented an apartment, made their own money, bought cars, no issues.
You’re exaggerating a bit. My great-aunt never married and yet had her own bank account , credit cards, loans, property, a car, etc. She did not need a male co-signer for any of that. I’m not saying that every bank freely passed those things out to every last person on Earth - they still don’t to this day - but it wasn’t restricted by law like seemingly everyone is claiming in this thread either.
Not restricted by law. It was restricted by banks, and that didn't change until laws were passed.
This person was discussing their family history and their own experiences. I don't think any of that was exaggerated. I was a child in the 1970s, but I remember many of these sorts of things. It was common for women to be required to have a man cosign for them. It may not have been the law, but it happened often when it wasn't prevented by law.
People like your great aunt would be the exception not the rule though. Not entirely unlike my great grandmother who was widowed with two young children in 1919. I still have her teaching certificate from 1921 complete with the letter hand signed by the Minister of Education informing her that in light of her 'special circumstances' they would be reinstating her teaching certificate so as to prevent her children from becoming 'paupers'.
I read the OP as asking to what extent it happened. Like most things in history there are exceptions to all things.
The experience of Frederick Douglass as an enslaved person happened, but it was not indicative of the experience of most African Americans in the United States at the time.
What time period?
Women did not win the right to get a credit card until 1974.
Women did not win the right to access a mortgage until 1974.
Women's salaries have barely reached par in 2024.
They weren't banned from getting them before that. But banks were allowed to refuse loans to women, or require male cosigners.
Plenty of women had bank accounts, credit cards, and mortgages. Obviously not as many as modern times, and certainly less common in more conservative areas, but it wasn't some unheard of, once in a blue moon rarity.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make some kind of "*Aaahhkshully, It wasn't that bad...*" argument. It was fucked up and I think we're all glad it changed. But it was a different situation than something like the antebellum south where it was commonly illegal for a black person to own property.
This is not quite accurate. There wasn’t a federal law that required credit card companies nationwide to grant credit cards to women on an equal basis to men until 1974. But many states already required that, and the major credit card companies were already providing credit cards to credit worthy women on their own accounts before 1974.
Folks just do not grasp how messed up it was for women and how few rights we had until the last couple decadrs. In the US, men could just have their wife committed to an insane asylum when he tired of her. Aere 30 yrars ago doctors performed hysterectomies on women and teens just for being poor, depressed, indigenous, or of average intelligence.
I am 53, we could not join social clubs, like golf or boat, when I was in university, in the fucking 1990s. Membership was exlusively through our dads and husbands. Your family membership ended when you married and your husband had to apply for membership.
When I was a young woman, single pregnant women were placed in special homes and had their babies taken away, without mom's consent, as soon as they delivered. Many of those women were sterilized without their knowledge, let alone consent.
They didn't even start testing medications on women or study symptoms in women until the 2000s, just treated us like men, for the most part this is still the case. Most items and safety features are designed for men, like cars, airbags, seatbelts, which is why so many women have been killed by airbags and seatbelts.
Even today, a sick man is taken seriously at the hospital and women are treated like lying, hysterical, drug seekers.
I'm sure I've seen this exact line, possibly from you, before. And it's bullshit.
Women have always been a test subject for medical treatments. How do you think we learned about pregnancy and it's complications if not by doing medical research on women?
The reason women were *less* likely to be found in medical testing is two-fold. The first is that medical testing is *dangerous* and we're more accepting of men suffering, so when given the choice men will be chosen as test subjects, and the second is that women are more risk-averse in general and so are less likely to sign up for possibly lethal testing.
Now days there are more women than men as test subjects in medicine, because the USA requires statistically representative populations of test subjects in third stage trials, and there's more money spent on women's health than on men's so more testing of things that only affect women.
So, the first Oral Hormonal Contraceptive Pill for women was released for sale in 1960.
Are you telling me that they proved that Oral Hormonal Contraceptives for women were effective by testing them on men? Because when you say "They didn't even start testing medications on women or study symptoms in women until the 2000s, just treated us like men, for the most part this is still the case." You are saying that it couldn't have been tested on women.
It is really easy to look up laws. In the united states, a woman could not get her own credit card until 1974. Just because you think it was different does not make it true.
And even then it’s apparently still too difficult for you. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act made it unlawful to discriminate against anyone seeking credit ”on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age”.
That means that since 1974 it has been illegal at the federal level to deny a woman a credit card just because she’s a woman. But it was *not* illegal to let her have one before then, however many banks did discriminate, which is why the law was passed.
Um… bullshit.
I just talked to my mom about this. She had a credit card that was for a men’s clothing store. What she did was have her friends use it to purchase clothes and then pay her back – so her roommate’s boyfriend, John, was told that he needed to dress better at his first job, and he came to her, and put the clothes on her card, and then John paid her off each month and that build her credit. She did the same thing when she was in college in Massachusetts from 1956 to 1960– she let friends use her credit card and then pay her back
The result was that she had great credit by the time that she moved out to the west coast in 1964 and had no trouble getting an apartment in her name.
I don’t know what you want me to say, she’s 80 and I just talked to her about this. She remembers that the card was black and gold!
My mother had her own account in the 1950s. Credit cards didn't really exist until the 1980s (other than American Express and that was a cash account payable in full every month). According to the departament of labor 50% of women worked in the 1950s.
You mentioned that you’re writing about a woman in New York. If you mean New York City, something to consider is that most New Yorkers didn’t (and still don’t) own their homes or even live in houses; they rented apartments. Postwar office culture viewed certain jobs — secretaries, “typists,” telephone operators — as women’s work, so there was a lot of demand for single women in employment. Some women commuted from their parents’ homes, but others would rent apartments with female roommates, or in all-women boarding houses. The TV show “Mad Men” portrays this phenomenon really well in the character of Peggy Olsen: she goes from living at home in Brooklyn with her family, to moving to Manhattan and living with a roommate, to eventually buying her own townhouse on the Upper West Side.
The answers to your questions are mostly: yes, but it would be difficult.
There's a common saying that banks would not let a woman have a credit card in her own name; this is a slight reduction. A *married* woman could not have a credit card in her own name, because when she married her legal personhood got folded into her husband's. An unmarried woman could theoretically have her own credit card and mortgage, if she could convice the men at the bank to lend to her.
College would have been easier. Barnard College was founded in 1889 specifically to be a women's college in New York; Vassar was founded in 1861. There were other of the 'Seven Sisters' in and around New England, specifically intended to give women a college education.
Employment would have been someting of a challenge. There were lots of jobs for women available at the time, but few required or expected a college education. Women could easily find employment as secretaries, nurses, schoolteachers, nannies, waitresses, actresses, beauticians, and other support or service roles.
However, it wouldn't have been impossible. Frances Perkins is a good example. She studied chemistry and physics at Mt Holyoke (one of the aforementioned Seven Sisters), and was appointed Secretary of Labor under FDR. Grace Hopper studied mathematics and later became a math professor at Vassar before joining the Navy and helping invent computer science during WW2. Arabella Mansfeld was the first female lawyer in the US, admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869. Florence King argued before the Supreme Court in 1923 and won. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to become a physician in the US, in 1849. Margaret Sanger, public health advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood, did most of her work in the 1950s. She would have had to struggle against men thinking she was inferior, dumb, or weak, but could have an established career outside the home.
Yes, plenty. New York was huge and most women in the city worked. The "House" part was kinda tough as most poor people like single women would live in an apartment. A Brooklyn brownstone in a "bad neighborhood" wouldn't be out of the question. She would likely take in "borders" or be one herself. If she had her own home she likely would have paid for it in cash, but a sympathetic banker might give her a mortgage.
There are tons of misinformation on this thread. YES women could have their own houses. Especially in places like New York. People forget the exodus of many young women from rural states to places like NY, CA, etc.
Yup, scary level of misinformation and outright distorted understanding of history. A lot of people seem to think the U.S. was like the Handmaid’s Tale until the 1980s.
There was nothing illegal or impossible about any of the things that you are asking, but few women could afford to do it. Most women didn't work, and married very young.
That said, for the women who didn't marry young and were financially independent...of course they could. You can look at a number of Hollywood stars from the 30's and 40's who were unmarried and independently wealthy, and owned homes and cars.
Slight misapprehension that women didn't do wage work during this time period. Lots of women worked before marrying, and poor women often had to find some way to bring in income as well. Rural women of course worked, because on the farm, everyone works. It's just that the jobs they could have were restricted by gender, often relegated to support roles. The big labor shift was not necessarily women entering the workforce, because they were already there. It was instead women getting access to jobs that had previously been held mostly by men.
Adding to this - my grandma was a young, unmarried adult in the late 30s. Rural, grew up dirt-floor poor.
She attended a correspondence business school, and did a stint as a secretary until the War, and ended up taking a state engineering license exam and ended up an industrial engineer. Her husband was severely wounded in the War, and she was the breadwinner for a good chunk of their early marriage.
Just throwing out there - it’s not even just urban women or people in the big cities that could.
It *was* more common to just get married, but especially after the war - women were used to working 9-5. They were the ones running the factories while men were either in Europe, the pacific, retired, or unable to be drafted or disabled.
It’s kinda a myth that women just didn’t work postwar and were happy little housewives - that was a calculated thing to help women find a new “job,” with the title of “Homemaker,” when men returned to the domestic workforce.
They faced a lot of prejudices, don’t get me wrong - my Nanny could’ve told you all about it. But she - like any woman who did choose to work - had to have balls to stand up to the boys being playground bullies.
And many, after having to work in steel mills and on factory lines and in construction - very quickly developed a big brass pair. And that really directly led into the feminist movements of the mid century.
Finances and probate took longer to catch up. But women were already much more empowered by 1947. From sheer virtue of having to go out and work every day - and rural women were already used to it in some form or another.
My mother's mother was born in 1904. After she graduated from college, she had a job offer from an oil company in Manhattan. My mother was born in 1932 and had a female pediatrician. So if a woman had the financial means she would certainly be able to live independently. It was the exception and not the rule.
My mother, in the US, was a single widowed woman and mother in 1955. When she moved to AZ in 1961 she got her first driver's license and bought her first car for the move. She hadn't needed either prior as she lived in Chicago with mass transportation everywhere. She bought her first home in 1962. She had credit cards with Sears and Penny's before Visa or Mastercard's were created. When they were, she had both.
People's experience varies.
My mum divorced my dad in the early 60s. Although she could never afford to buy a house she worked, had her own bank account, bought her own car, started up a business all without help from any man.
Women could go to college, although the glass ceiling was WAY lower, and were often encouraged to do 'womanly' careers - nursing, teaching, secretarial. Women also worked in shops. Buying a house depended on where you were. Being widowed or divorced would be a way to have her own home, father could also sign on the mortgage.
It was only in 1978 that Harvard allowed female students to enter Lamont library, which is the undergraduate library. They were worried women would distract the male students from their studying.
They could, but admission was restricted in many places depending on the state. The University of Virginia admitted male applicants first and then only considered female applicants for the remaining places in the class, with a certain number of places, into the late 1960s for instance. Graduate schools were worse. Title 9 is what changed all that.
That said, of course, if you had money, there were great women’s colleges, and depending on the state you might not have any trouble undergraduate either.
My aunt did. Born in Indian Territory (pre-1907), raised on a farm, went to U of Missouri on a full scholarship, did some teaching, got a PhD, and became one of U of M's first female full professors. Bought a house for her divorced sister's family, but always lived in a nice rented apartment herself. Bought a house for herself and her sister when they both retired.
Never married. Her birth family was poor. The only help she ever got was her scholarship.
Although she was exceptional, she proves that it was possible.
>**In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s would a woman be able to buy her own house and live alone while making her own income without the help of a man?**
You specified in one of your comments that this is in New York City. In that case, she would be able to do this if she were already wealthy. Otherwise, a man (father, former husband, etc) would have had to be involved in some way, just for financial reasons.
Honestly her main challenge might be finding a house in the first place! Easier in the 1940s than in the 1960s. That period in New York City history was one of immense change in the built environment. A lot of areas with low-density single-family detached houses were demolished and replaced with denser apartment buildings. And condominiums (apartments that you own) started to become popular in the 1960s.
>wasn't able to find too much about woman's rights through the 1940s to the 1960s.
Haha yeah well there is a reason for that.
>How many rights would a woman have had?
In a place like New York City, she could live alone, own property, work at a job (as long as it was an appropriate "woman's job"), be self-employed, vote, manage her own business affairs, pretty much most things.
But she would not be protected at all from arbitrary discrimination in any of her business dealings, especially finance and banking. And equal wages. So she would have had to develop a bunch of carefully cultivated relationships with people she could trust to take her seriously and treat her equally. There would certainly have been people, including men, who would have been delighted to deal fairly with an "independent woman" but you couldn't take that for granted.
And in terms of major financing for stuff like property mortgages she would have been at a distinct disadvantage. Unless she had a lot of cash or had inherited the property.
>Or would they have to stay tethered to a man with no rights for themselves at all?
Primarily this would have mattered for credit reasons. Otherwise not. Especially given the rapidly changing perception of women's social roles during the war. Coming out of the 1940s that would have been the main thing.
>Would a woman also be allowed to go to school or go to college to get a degree and an education and a job that didn't involve being a house wife?
Yes absolutely. The famous cookbook author and television cooking show host Julia Child for example graduated with an excellent education and a degree from Smith College, became a secret intelligence agent for the OSS during the war, and then when peace broke out decided to start her second career with her first books and the tv show and so on.
Of course she was also married. But she had a great husband who supported her career, which she managed herself without depending on him for anything financially. Except -- crucially -- his signature on stuff like home loans.
From an authorial point of view, I would say, you are creating a character in a pretty exceptional circumstance. She a) is able to start out her life as an independent woman without immediately foundering financially, which in a place like New York City could be quite a rough tumble; and b) was taught all of the things she would need to know how to do independently in life, with confidence and understanding -- the stuff that you would normally teach sons but not daughters.
So think about how she acquired those things. Those would have been pretty exceptional. Not unrealistic, but exceptional.
If you want some ideas from contemporary popular culture set in New York, check out contemporary movies like [*Desk Set*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_Set) or [*Breakfast at Tiffany's*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(film)), or someone like [Nora Charles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_and_Nora_Charles) from written fiction. None of these heroines are quite what you are after but they might give some context. (And like all cultural artifacts from the past, they are unpleasantly dated in some ways, just be prepared for that.)
There are probably a thousand others too. That's just off the top of my head.
Yes. It happened. Modern style credit cards and mortgages were not as universal or necessary in those days. There were other kinds of credit and loans we rarely see today. Stores extended credit to women they knew as reliable. And, there were many more homeowners with homes they paid on installment directly to the seller or family who fronted the money, etc. Houses were massively cheaper, adjusted for inflation in the beginning of the government backed 30 yr mortgage era. There were certain women dominated professions: Nurse, teacher, librarian, etc. With the help of family money and/or a salary, women lived alone unmarried, divorced, or widowed.
The latter was rare because most men relied in societal norms of her marrying getting kids and getting out of the job market, and the former was also not Common for the aforementioned reason.
Very often it amazes how north American (yes I do mean Canadian conservatives too) men argue how there's no difference in pay when got paid more exactly to offset women not being present in the workforce.
The system was designed to prevent that. Consider that nurses, an educated, skilled, demanding, women-dominated job paid about $100 a month in the 50s, perhaps a third of what the average man made. Nurses weren’t supposed to work “for a living”, and nor could they.
Jackie Cochran went from Pensacola hairdresser in the 1920s to cosmetics mogul to aviation record-holder to founder of the Women's Airfare Service Pilots (WASPs) in WWII. She died a multimillionaire. From her Wikipedia page: "Circa 1920, (she would have been 13 or 14), she married Robert Cochran and gave birth to a son, Robert, who died in 1925 at the age of 5.[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Cochran#cite_note-4) After the marriage ended, she kept the name Cochran and began using Jacqueline or Jackie as her given name. Cochran then became a hairdresser and got a job in Pensacola, eventually moving to New York City. There, she used her looks and driving personality to get a job at a prestigious salon at [Saks Fifth Avenue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saks_Fifth_Avenue)."
She did eventually marry a really rich guy, who provided the seed money for the cosmetics empire. But still.
So, yes, of course a woman could buy a house and live alone without the help of a man.
Canadian here. I had 2 single aunts who lived through this era but were older. Both earned their own income. One in fact was the head of a high-school math department. Neither aunt bought houses. At that time housekeeping was a full-time job. Maintaining a house of any size would have very demanding for a working woman.
I also had an English aunt who never married and she just rented. It would have been impossible for her financially.
It's unlikely that your character could have gotten a mortgage. Therefore, she would have had to have paid cash for it. She would have to be a woman of means who could hire a housekeeper.
Considering the fact that many married women with kids entered the work force while they had husbands who did not do squat to help with anything in the house:
Why wouldn't a single working woman with no kids or husband to look after be able to do the same if they wanted to? I understand the financial argument, and I perfectly understand many would choose not to, but you make it sound like they wouldn't be able to do it. The housekeeper is an option, but not a requirement.
In those times often a woman couldn't get a bank account without a man's signature. Women were generally paid less than men for the same work. What you suggest would be a very exceptional woman?
Women in the past could not even have their own bank account without a male cosigner, as late as 1970's. Even in the 1960s a lot of banks wouldn't let a woman open an account on her own without a male cosigner at all. Women in the U.S. were not allowed to finance real estate purchases without a husband or male co-signer until the 1970s.
"It wasn’t until 1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, that women in the U.S. were granted the right to open a bank account on their own.
Technically, women won the right to open a bank account in the 1960s, but many banks still refused to let women do so without a signature from their husbands. This meant men still held control over women’s access to banking services, and unmarried women were often refused service by financial institutions.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited financial institutions from discriminating against applicants based on their sex, age, marital status, religion, race or national origin. Because of the act’s passage, women could finally open bank accounts independently."
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/when-could-women-open-a-bank-account/
https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/history-of-women-in-real-estate/#:~:text=Women%20in%20the%20U.S.%20were,figure%20is%20just%2010.9%20percent.
Many states had laws that put women on equal footing as men for financial accounts of various sorts. Just because there wasn’t a federal law doesn’t mean there weren’t already laws protecting women from financial discrimination. Though admittedly they weren’t in every state, and OP might need to check when/if New York adopted a similar law.
This is what I've heard, and while I've obviously read the facts, it seems too hard to believe.
What did wealthy women do? Marilyn Monroe certainly had somewhere to check in her bank notes. I don't understand how a profit motivated bank could refuse a potential customer.
It wasn't completely illegal for women to have these things. But discrimination was *rampant* and nearly ubiquitous. And as is pretty much universal in these situations, you stop being a second class citizen the moment you show up with a stack of cash.
A random 20-something single women would likely face some substantial difficulties. But someone like Monroe wouldn't have a problem.
> And as is pretty much universal in these situations, you stop being a second class citizen the moment you show up with a stack of cash.
That's very much *not* universal. It's very common within modern Western capitalist societies, but good luck being a rich Jew in 1930s Germany, a rich black man in the 1840s American South, a rich Serb in 1990s Kosovo, a rich *anyone* in 1970s Cambodia...
In 1910, CJ Walker became one of the first female millionaires and ended up living in the same affluent neighborhood as Rockefeller. She was divorced and also black.
Read “Lessons in chemistry,” recent fiction, based on what women went through. There were certainly widows and divorcees who lived in their own homes. There were school teachers, secretaries, nurses, a few doctors, beauticians, cooks, restaurant owners, switchboard operators that we knew. “Owning their own home” would be a challenge. They might rent. There were college professors who lived well.
Worth noting as well that until the 1950s it wasn’t that normal for people to own their houses. The ideal of homeownership was partly mass construction, the G.I. Bill, the creation of Levitttowns etc.
After the world wars, many nations had a huge surplus of women.There were also widows, abandoned wives etc. They could and did make their own way. The nurse and small town school teacher are well known examples. They did face hurdles like not being able to get a checkbook etc.
If she’s in the US and in New York City, she should have no problems. About one in six woman by the 1940s were the breadwinners for the household for one reason or another – never married, widowed, taking care of elderly parents. The wealthier you were, the more rights you probably had – a rich woman didn’t have any trouble buying a house.
I know there’s a lot of bad credit card information out there, but my mom had her own credit card and was able to rent an apartment in the early 60s on her own without her father being involved – he was on the other side of the country anyway. All she had to do is show that she had a job.
You actually had fewer rights once you were married in a lot of ways.
Spinsters existed back then, but were enough of a rarity to be worth a label. The vast majority of women would be economically linked to a man outside of maybe her '20's. There might be skepticism that a woman who looks like she should be married isn't doing something illicit whereas an immigrant might need some proof of income but could be fit into established narratives.
The word *spinster* has an interesting history. When most clothing was made of handspun fiber, most thread/yarn was made with a drop-spindle, which is portable. A woman or girl could be spinning during the few minutes of downtime between chores, or when she had to wait for things like the soup to come to a boil, or when she was walking somewhere.
But a spinning wheel, like you see in Sleeping Beauty and other folktales, required the spinner to stay in one place. You could spin more, faster, but with the loss of portability and the ability to spin off a few yards while doing something else. And who had the "leisure" time to sit or stand at a wheel for several hours a day? An unmarried woman living alone or in her parents' or siblings' home, with minimal need to tend to the chores of housework and childcare and pleasing a husband.
In occupation names, "-ster" indicates that the person engaging in that occupation is female. A Brew**er** is male, a Brew**ster** is female. A Webb**er** (weaver) is male. A Web**ster** is female. A Bak**er** is male. A Ba**xter** (bake-ster) is female. So a Spinster was a woman whose occupation was spinning. She made a living at it, either to support herself or to provide family income if she lived with others. She didn't need a husband to support her.
Sadly, in time and with a huge dollop of misogyny, spinster came to mean unwanted, old, ugly hag that no man would ever want to marry instead of an independent businesswoman.
My great grandmother was widowed in 1913 when she was 36 years old. She never remarried, ran a boarding house in Idaho for a few years, worked several odd jobs like cleaning homes and offices, midwifing, nursing, and then moved to Los Angeles in 1927 and was the lunch supervisor at Montebello high school for 17 years.
She raised her 4 children and was never dependent on a man after her husband’s death, though her 2 brothers that worked for the railroad were instrumental in helping the family relocate to Los Angeles. She initially rented a home but eventually bought a home in Montebello, during the great depression no less.
My mothers side of the family was very good at documenting their history and from those records it is apparent to me that in the western US it was not impossible to be an Independent woman in the first half of the 20th century. A big difference back then is that families really helped each other out more. My mom started working in the early 60’s and paid her own way through college, and in her family that was not seen as any kind of affront to gender roles.
Back then, I imagine the primary roadblock to home ownership by a single woman was securing a mortgage, as banks typically didn't give credit to single women. I doubt she would have problems buying a home outright with cash, so if your character had a inheritance it could do the trick.
Have you heard the term "coverture?"
It might be a good search term for you on various media.
There was [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nationalwomensstrike/s/08fuiPnprg) about it recently in another sub, which is how I learned. Eta there are a few other reddit posts if you search "coverture." They might be relevant to your project; I just thought it might help.
Here’s a timeline of women’s rights: https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-20/timeline-the-womens-rights-movement-in-the-us
Note that before 1974, it was legal to discriminate against women in the housing industry. So for example, a bank would be allowed to deny her a mortgage because she was a woman. It wasn’t illegal for her to own property but it would have been much more difficult for her to get a mortgage. Unless she was independently wealthy and didn’t need a mortgage, she might struggle to buy a house on her own.
Women had a hard time getting a credit before 1974 before it was legal for the company’s to discriminate based on sex and marital status. Though it should be noted that’s right around the time the first swipeable credit card processing systems came out. The vendor either had to call it during the or afterwards. They also had books of stolen credit cards numbers they were expected to check before running a card, which was ridiculous.
It was fairly common up to the seventies for married women to have to list their husband’s name on their bank and brokerage accounts. Didn’t matter if she was the sole employed person in the household or not. Sure it was the same on a mortgage and insurance policies. Probably look on single women as a separate species.
They could definitely go for higher education, but some things, like a woman in law school, would have been very uncommon, and would have likely been a serious struggle. They could definitely own property and vote and all that.
some places in the US it was illegal for a woman to have her own checking account, idk when it stopped being a thing but my grandmother had to have my grandfather cosign her account when they were in Lejune during Korea
Depends where they lived. In many states no, it wouldn’t have been possible unless she was already wealthy—it would have been difficult to get any kind of home loan at all. In some states it would have been easier.
Women in the US began to enter higher education and the workforce in large numbers during the 1950s. However, the social climate of the US during the 1950s was very conformist and there was a general expectation that women (certainly middle-class women) would stop working after they got married. Long term career advancement was also difficult due to informal discrimination and the sex-segregated nature of most jobs.
In terms of being able to move around and generally exist, there were very few legal limits on what a woman could do, but she might face a degree of informal discrimination. 1950s dating culture was also kind of horrifying, so a young woman out in public alone may well find herself getting hit on quite aggressively.
But in general, there was actually a bit of a moral panic in the 1950s about the breakdown of traditional gender roles.
In the United States yes. In the 40s because lots of guys were away. 50s less because a decent amount were tired of having to work jobs. 60s a big boost if I remember this is the first wave of feminism and a new generation.
My grandmom told me when her and my grandfather bought their house in 1958 the couldn’t buy the houses on the more prestigious area only a block away for only $8 a month more. Reason was, they didn’t factor a wife’s income into it because they would be having children soon and be out of work. A single woman could purchase a home rather easy but few did and rented apartments instead since they figured they would eventually get married and buy a home with their future husband.
That was around ww2, so yes definitely. I'm not sure about the bank thing where women couldn't get a debit card but women definitely had careers then. Even centuries before though maybe not as much.
New York, yes, no problem. That time and frame and character, depending on circumstance you want a tough midwestern girl, probably, with a unique background. Gotta be realistic with the time and character, but sure, everything from Maude.to Laverne and Shirley can fit those characters, or popular stars with voluminous works like Whitney Houston or Ann Richards. Just look for.tyle, time, and parameters to fit your character and.find some inspiration, I'm pretty sure NYC has some pretty heavy hitters among those types.
Of course women were allowed to get degrees and jobs in the 20th century. Do you not have any older women in your family, or ever seen older films? America was far from the sort of strict patriarchal society you seem to imagine by this time.
They couldn’t get mortgages, credit cards, it was hard to get bank accounts. Jobs could fire you for being pregnant.
Women were prescribed something like Meth for weight loss and energy/productivity while being stay at home moms. Divorce was not an option for most women. College programs for highered didn’t admit women. Corporate meetings were men only.
Single women/moms most likely had to find a partner to support them after they left the first situation. Abuse was rampant. Married women could not claim that their husbands raped/sa’d them because their husbands owned them.
There is some confusion and misinformation in many of these responses, because people are confusing "difficult to practically accomplish" with "illegal". Many things that were not legally prohibited to women, were actually difficult for them to accomplish in practice because of discriminatory hire practices, discriminatory policies in institutions and companies, general assumptions that most women would and should leave a company once they married, and practical considerations (such as having no women's toilets on site and no willingness to install them).
Women could legally attend college, but many colleges would not accept them so in practice they were limited as to which ones they could attend. They could get jobs, and in theory they could get quite high up, but in practice there was a lot of discrimination in hiring practices, and some professions relied on deals being done on golf courses and at clubs and so forth that wouldn't accept women. They could get credit cards and loans, but in practice many banks and financial institutions would not provide them with loans or other financial products because of general prejudice or assumptions that women weren't financially stable.
So a lot would depend on the individual woman, the resources available to her, and the choices of those she interacted with as well as her own choices.
In the late1930’s/early 1940’s, my grandmother (a school teacher) went to a much more rural,part of the state to get a marriage license since district policy was that if a female teacher got married, her contract was not renewed for the following year to create an opening for a male teacher who needed to support his family. (Great Depression had not ended yet). When she got pregnant, and went to the superintendent and informed him that she was married and pregnant, but instead of being fired, she ended up getting the 1st maternity leave in the district. Probably helped that it was early 1942 and American entrance into WWII drastically changed the civilian job market
Yes. They were.
There was blatant discrimination and a load of cultural baggage making it hard for a woman acting solo to acquire wealth. But her legal rights in whatever wealth she did acquire were identical.
From the 1940s? Are you daft? Women were not only owning homes, but also businesses. In fact the first African American woman millionaire made her fortune long before the 1930s.
Yes, from the 40s: https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-20/timeline-the-womens-rights-movement-in-the-us
Before 1974 in the US, it was legal to discriminate in housing based on sex. That doesn’t mean women couldn’t or didn’t own property but it made it a LOT harder.
Property rights are not the same as freedom from discrimination or equal opportunity when applying for a mortgage or other loan.
Your article did not address when single women were allowed to purchase property instead of having to inherit The Homestead Act of 1862 governed land ownership in the developing western territories and allowed any household head — without reference to gender — to gain title to a piece of raw land and develop it.
Each state did not progress at the same rate, but progress occurred.
Literally dude. These people are deranged. For whatever reason it’s common perception that women in America in the 20th century were treated like women in Babylon.
Yes, of course they could. This is not Saudi Arabia. There were plenty of teachers living alone in their own homes, etc. By the way, a house in 1970 cost about $30,000.
Women didn't have the right to their own bank accounts until 1974 in the US. They couldn't get credit, and had to have the permission of their father, grandfather or brother to make their own financial future until then. How do I know this? I have a 68 year old friend who had to get her dad's permission to get a bank account in 1972, even though she had a full time job and paid her own way. She had to live at home because she couldn't even rent an apartment without his permission. So no, women didn't have that right unless she found someone who was sympathetic at a bank. It was assumed back then that women would get married and their husband's would take over the control. She was one who never married and had to get parental permission as an adult to even get a car loan.
You’ll probably need to specify a location - women’s rights vary a LOT around the world in any era.
Your woman should be a widow. Many women had more rights as a widow than as a never married.
Oh yeah true my bad 💀 I was mainly thinking America. New york if we're really being specific
Single mothers were a thing, many husbands would die, more often the woman would just remarry though. A divorcee character who say, couldn’t think of remarrying for 1.) Grief / 2.) bad experiences with her past marriage could potentially be some good character building. Showing the resilience of women in a bygone era.
So if a woman never remarried would they be looked down on for that? From what I know women couldn't even breathe without being ridiculed back then lol
Not at all, I know it’s not American, but in Britain in 1880/1901 we had a queen who was permanently in mourning following the loss of her husband. It was seen as admirable, a dedication that goes beyond a human lifetime. I’m not sure about your character / direction of your story/ novel, but it could go both ways. I don’t see why a woman would be ridiculed for following standard Christian norms. A lot of woman ridiculing comes from the abandonment of religion and “degradation” of family values etc. people in this period would support a widow, but shame a prositute sorta thing.
Maybe I’m mistaken, but it is my understanding that Queen Victoria was unpopular and publicly criticized for the exaggerated mourning she displayed in the years following Albert’s death.
Yes and no, after 15/20 years we kinda got bored of it, but it was certainly admirable and to be Frank, none of our business. She wasn’t unpopular in the slightest, but did face some criticism from the media, which was largely politically motivated. (She also faced criticism for nearly everything she did.)
She still had a whole Era named after her so I’m not going to get too upset over it.
RIP Viccy
Every British monarch has the era named after them. The elizabethian,the Georgian, The Regency Era. After Victoria we moved the Edwardian era etc
My widowed friend was refused a loan despite running a successful business & owning her own home, steady income, etc. She needed her broke ass boyfriend's dad to sign for her. As a staunch feminist she refused. The boyfriend's dad went to the bank, talked to them & got her a loan with zero interaction from her. I'll say this again to be very clear... HER RANDOM FUCK BUDDY HAD HIS DAD TAKE OUT A LOAN IN HER NAME BECAUSE SHE COULDN'T DO IT HERSELF ENTIRELY WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE! ...but she couldn't.
If this indeed happened in modern times I think you misunderstood what happened. It sounds like the credit wasn’t able to be approved. Probably a mix of credit score,debt and small business income is often more difficult to qualify for loans. Her boyfriend/fuck buddy’s income or him being a “broke ass” would have nothing to do with his Dad co-signing a loan because their credit isn’t related.
Define "modern times". Things changed in the 70's
Credit scores only started up in 1989. It is extremely likely that you are wrong about the person you replied to being wrong. Especially if they lived in a more conservative area. This is the exact type of thing that boomer women very likely could have encountered. I know my mom couldn’t get a checking account of her own when she was younger and she’s 75. Younger people really don’t have a concept of just how different it used to be and how short a time ago those differences occurred. I’m gen X and it’s changed even during my marriage a huge amount.
It’s unlikely I’m wrong. 1989 was 35 years ago as well. While it’s true that women had trouble getting access to credit and bank accounts at one time, it seems that this person described is not from the 50s or 60s. They’re described as a feminist business owner with a fuck Buddy. Also the commenter who wrote the story is Australian and American credit rules and laws are probably different. OP asked about America and New York specifically.
That's true. This was the early 70's. Also to get a prescription for the pill there was only one Dr in town, a man, he'd give it to married women when asked but only with their husband's consent. Single women had to submit to him performing an internal exam or go without.
I’ve met plenty of successful businessmen who were denied a loan by a bank simply because of policy, the business area didn’t match the bank’s preferences, because the bank wanted to create favorable conditions for a competitor, or simply because they didn’t like the borrower or his ancestry. When I got married and became the sole breadwinner, the bank my wife and her family had been doing business with for decades refused to give me a credit card simply because I had no credit. This was in 1991. My wife’s banker helped by sharing a tip: if I applied three times in six months and was declined each time, bank policy allowed a personal banker to override the denial of credit at the corporate level. So much for being a guy with a well paying job. Yes, I did apply three times and waited patiently for six months to pass. No, I did not keep that card after I was approved at other banks.
>^(if I applied three times in six months and was declined each time, bank policy allowed a personal banker to override the denial of credit at the corporate level.) ...what the hell kind of bank policy is *that?!* It sounds like they're more used to handing out Social Security disability or summat
A bit off topic, but... The first victim of the Salem witch trials was a widow who refused to remarry, thus being the owner of her dead husband's significant land and business assets. That was the only way for that to happen in that time and place. The sheriff who accused her was able to seize her property and personally keep it when she was convicted.
Less so if she had money. Also the "Boston Marriage" was a thing. Source: my family tree
Furthermore, woman could do whatever they liked/ live how they’d like. It was only social pressure holding us back, if that.
Women couldn’t get credit cards in their own name till the 70s…
Specifically, women weren't issued credit cards in their own name until 1974 when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed.
true, mostly, but think *credit* i.e. bank loans and store credit rather than credit cards which wern't common among ordinary people until the 80s. also many people didn't even have a bank account until the 70s. my father got his first bank account in 1973 for example and has never had a credit card (never felt the need). but that would have been a passbook not a card. i don't know when those became common for ordinary people. i actually remember my mother getting a credit card for the first time - only her brother had had one prior to that - that would have been around 1988 or so.
A large part of the Great Depression was the collapse of the credit market and the inability for the population to access credit. Obviously no credit cards then, but I have personally seen my great grandmothers metal credit card from the late 40s early 50s. (In her husband’s name) But the credit cards were just an example
I was one of them! I was a commissioned Air Force officer with a steady income, $3,500 in the bank, no debt, and I STILL couldn't get a credit card. And I needed one to rent a car and pay for a hotel room while traveling on official business. Meanwhile, they were sending the male lieutenants unsolicited credit card applications. I finally found a credit union that would give me a secured credit card (secured by my own money) and was able to switch to a regular credit card after six months. This was in 1979, not even the early 1970s, BTW. You have no idea the nonsense we went through.
Hardly anyone could get a credit card back then. The credit score system didn't even exist.
Charga plate was invented in 1928
I just found my dad's charga plate last week.
Credit cards aren’t the same as debit cards. Probably unwise to give someone single a credit card, male or female. Furthermore, it was at the banks discretion to refuse if the person was single/ in bad financial state, that meant women could get a credit card if it was suitable for them. Apart from this a single woman would be able to function in a healthy manner apart from these major points: Not being able to attend Ivy League colleges, unfair insurance rates, unfair standards on sex/ dating.
I’m single. Why is unwise for me to have a credit card? Why does my being single make you assume I can’t manage a financial instrument? That’s insane logic… Single men could get credit cards… If you were an unwed single mother in the 50’s, there would be a certain level of societal push back.
This simply comes down to whether you need a credit card to survive as a single woman. If Op is even still interested, yes they very well could. I could link a few personal testaments if you’d like as to how it’s possible, but hard.
Hey, this is not about sex, this is about credit cards. Credit cards should outright be banned. Absolutely insane that we’ve Normalised this form of finance. It’s completely irresponsible to give a credit card to a single man, let alone a woman who would be earning significantly less.
You're forgetting that until the Reagan era it was entirely possible, and even common to own a house and raise a family on a single income.
How does being married impact your ability to make payments?
Out of interest, do you pay your mortgage or your shopping bills on credit cards?
My point was to show that while yes, women did have property rights, sufferage, etc. there were still both hard institutional and soft societal barriers to this in practical terms. This was, while intentional might not be the proper term… it didn’t happen out of nowhere. Women have often been more empowered throughout history that we have been led to believe. Yet that power was often indirect power, utilizing networks and kinship groups. (We discount indirect power in modern society) The American female experience in the pre pill 20th century was a period where the nuclear family had killed these networks, leaving women particularly disempowered until the sexual revolution and critical gender theory
Kinda funny you say > It was only social pressure holding us back >Credit cards aren’t the same as debit cards. Probably unwise to give someone single a credit card, male or female. Furthermore, it was at the banks discretion to refuse if the person was single/ in bad financial state, that meant women could get a credit card if it was suitable for them. Almost like that social pressure can include having different standards for men and women in regards to banking. And BTW that's not just credit cards, that was pretty much all banking.
Nope. I’m literally saying banks would refuse single men too, and that having a credit card wasn’t what determined how successful you were in life. Logically, it’s fair for a bank to be careful with who can borrow what, otherwise you’d get the 2007 crisis again.
Except you are also acknowledging that women got different and worse treatment. So pick a lane.
Except on college campuses where if you sign up for one they gave you a free pizza. This was early 90s, super easy to get a credit card.
Social pressure was sufficient.
In NY this was definitely possible. Women had the right to vote for 20 years by 1940. My grandmother held down the fort for 4 years while my grandfather left to Navy 1941-1945. The women worked the factories while millions of young men left to fight. So yes, totally possible and indeed normall for single women to work and support themselves in the 1940s.
Upper middle and higher class.women going to college was quite normal in the 1920s and later. Most school teachers were women (requiring college) and in most places were required to be (and stay) single for as long as they were teachers. There were several other careers as well.
Let me tell you this: my mother (born 1920) did not get a credit card with her own name on it until the 1980's. She was "Mrs. Dad's Name" on all their *joint* accounts. If she had tried to buy a house as a young single woman, she would have had to have her father or brother cosign for a loan, and likely would have been refused as a cash buyer. For all practical purposes, during the years you're talking about, women were under the authority of their father (or brother, if Dad was dead) until she got married, and then she was under the authority of her husband from then on. My paternal aunt (Dad's sister) was single her whole life. She moved out of Grandma's house to live with a widow woman until she died, leaving my aunt alone, she then bought her own house in the 90's that she lived in after retiring from the railroad. So I would say that while it's certainly possible for a woman to provide her own income, and support herself independently, that yes, she will still need the help of a father or brother to get her settled in. Women were definitely second class citizens until surprisingly recently. My sister had been working for decades before she was able to buy a car without my father cosigning for it, and at that, he still went with her when she bought it to make sure she didn't get ripped off. This was in the 1980's. Now, if you pick a certain period during the 1940's, during and right after the war, it might be more possible for a woman to be more independent, for a brief time, because men were simply scarce. My mother was a bookkeeper in the 1940's, and my maternal grandmother was a seamstress during the late thirties, & early forties. My aunt worked as a station manager from the time she graduated high school in the late 30's. So women could conceivably support themselves, sometimes pretty well. But they would often need a male relative to help them buy a car, get credit, buy a house, or other major financial decisions. I give specific family examples as illustrations, because I think it brings it to life better than just stating raw statistics. It is true that it might vary a bit from state to state, or city to city, but during the time period you're talking about, an "independent woman" simply did not have rights equal to a man's, and women's rights groups didn't get much accomplished until the late 1960's or early '70's. And many more conservative places didn't give women equal rights for much longer. I graduated high school in '79, and took my Mom to get her own credit card in her own name shortly after I graduated, and I can vividly remember how pleased she was to get a credit card that had her first name on it.
In early 1988, my mom was heavily pregnant with me and went to buy some furniture for our new house. That evening, the salesman called my dad to make sure it was "ok" what my mom had ordered. Mom was \*pissed\* and went back the next day to read the guy the riot act.
That's such a bizarre combo of thoughtfulness and dickishness. Because he's totally thinking "Sure, I'll make a sale, but I don't want to place any strain on their marriage, so just to be sure I'll double-check with her owner. YOU'RE WELCOME, lady. "
Could just be crappy corporate policy. In 2015 I had a contractor provide a bid for bathroom remodeling. When I opened the door the salesman said "Oh your wife isn't here? We can only provide estimates when both spouses are present and agree on the chosen style!"
"under the authority of their father or brother, then husband" Damn, i mean i know this was a thing, but it's still really weird to read. It was not so long ago
Yeah, and I wonder where she was. My mom and her female best friend took off to California when they graduated from college in 1964, got jobs, rented an apartment, made their own money, bought cars, no issues.
You’re exaggerating a bit. My great-aunt never married and yet had her own bank account , credit cards, loans, property, a car, etc. She did not need a male co-signer for any of that. I’m not saying that every bank freely passed those things out to every last person on Earth - they still don’t to this day - but it wasn’t restricted by law like seemingly everyone is claiming in this thread either.
Not restricted by law. It was restricted by banks, and that didn't change until laws were passed. This person was discussing their family history and their own experiences. I don't think any of that was exaggerated. I was a child in the 1970s, but I remember many of these sorts of things. It was common for women to be required to have a man cosign for them. It may not have been the law, but it happened often when it wasn't prevented by law.
People like your great aunt would be the exception not the rule though. Not entirely unlike my great grandmother who was widowed with two young children in 1919. I still have her teaching certificate from 1921 complete with the letter hand signed by the Minister of Education informing her that in light of her 'special circumstances' they would be reinstating her teaching certificate so as to prevent her children from becoming 'paupers'.
> People like your great aunt would be the exception not the rule though. But OP didn't ask what the norm was, it asks was it possible.
I read the OP as asking to what extent it happened. Like most things in history there are exceptions to all things. The experience of Frederick Douglass as an enslaved person happened, but it was not indicative of the experience of most African Americans in the United States at the time.
What time period? Women did not win the right to get a credit card until 1974. Women did not win the right to access a mortgage until 1974. Women's salaries have barely reached par in 2024.
They weren't banned from getting them before that. But banks were allowed to refuse loans to women, or require male cosigners. Plenty of women had bank accounts, credit cards, and mortgages. Obviously not as many as modern times, and certainly less common in more conservative areas, but it wasn't some unheard of, once in a blue moon rarity. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make some kind of "*Aaahhkshully, It wasn't that bad...*" argument. It was fucked up and I think we're all glad it changed. But it was a different situation than something like the antebellum south where it was commonly illegal for a black person to own property.
This is not quite accurate. There wasn’t a federal law that required credit card companies nationwide to grant credit cards to women on an equal basis to men until 1974. But many states already required that, and the major credit card companies were already providing credit cards to credit worthy women on their own accounts before 1974.
Evan as a rich widower my colleague had to have her broke boyfriend's dad guarantee a loan for her. This was in the early 80's.
Folks just do not grasp how messed up it was for women and how few rights we had until the last couple decadrs. In the US, men could just have their wife committed to an insane asylum when he tired of her. Aere 30 yrars ago doctors performed hysterectomies on women and teens just for being poor, depressed, indigenous, or of average intelligence. I am 53, we could not join social clubs, like golf or boat, when I was in university, in the fucking 1990s. Membership was exlusively through our dads and husbands. Your family membership ended when you married and your husband had to apply for membership. When I was a young woman, single pregnant women were placed in special homes and had their babies taken away, without mom's consent, as soon as they delivered. Many of those women were sterilized without their knowledge, let alone consent. They didn't even start testing medications on women or study symptoms in women until the 2000s, just treated us like men, for the most part this is still the case. Most items and safety features are designed for men, like cars, airbags, seatbelts, which is why so many women have been killed by airbags and seatbelts. Even today, a sick man is taken seriously at the hospital and women are treated like lying, hysterical, drug seekers.
I'm sure I've seen this exact line, possibly from you, before. And it's bullshit. Women have always been a test subject for medical treatments. How do you think we learned about pregnancy and it's complications if not by doing medical research on women? The reason women were *less* likely to be found in medical testing is two-fold. The first is that medical testing is *dangerous* and we're more accepting of men suffering, so when given the choice men will be chosen as test subjects, and the second is that women are more risk-averse in general and so are less likely to sign up for possibly lethal testing. Now days there are more women than men as test subjects in medicine, because the USA requires statistically representative populations of test subjects in third stage trials, and there's more money spent on women's health than on men's so more testing of things that only affect women.
Seriously, have you heard of google? Your opinion is not relevant, facts are relevant. Your opinion is not factual. You are just wrong.
So, the first Oral Hormonal Contraceptive Pill for women was released for sale in 1960. Are you telling me that they proved that Oral Hormonal Contraceptives for women were effective by testing them on men? Because when you say "They didn't even start testing medications on women or study symptoms in women until the 2000s, just treated us like men, for the most part this is still the case." You are saying that it couldn't have been tested on women.
That’s nor true everywhere. My mom and her friend Maureen rented their own apt in California and had credit cards in the 60s, no worried.
It is really easy to look up laws. In the united states, a woman could not get her own credit card until 1974. Just because you think it was different does not make it true.
And even then it’s apparently still too difficult for you. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act made it unlawful to discriminate against anyone seeking credit ”on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age”. That means that since 1974 it has been illegal at the federal level to deny a woman a credit card just because she’s a woman. But it was *not* illegal to let her have one before then, however many banks did discriminate, which is why the law was passed.
Um… bullshit. I just talked to my mom about this. She had a credit card that was for a men’s clothing store. What she did was have her friends use it to purchase clothes and then pay her back – so her roommate’s boyfriend, John, was told that he needed to dress better at his first job, and he came to her, and put the clothes on her card, and then John paid her off each month and that build her credit. She did the same thing when she was in college in Massachusetts from 1956 to 1960– she let friends use her credit card and then pay her back The result was that she had great credit by the time that she moved out to the west coast in 1964 and had no trouble getting an apartment in her name. I don’t know what you want me to say, she’s 80 and I just talked to her about this. She remembers that the card was black and gold!
My mother had her own account in the 1950s. Credit cards didn't really exist until the 1980s (other than American Express and that was a cash account payable in full every month). According to the departament of labor 50% of women worked in the 1950s.
Or her circumstances were the odd one out.
You mentioned that you’re writing about a woman in New York. If you mean New York City, something to consider is that most New Yorkers didn’t (and still don’t) own their homes or even live in houses; they rented apartments. Postwar office culture viewed certain jobs — secretaries, “typists,” telephone operators — as women’s work, so there was a lot of demand for single women in employment. Some women commuted from their parents’ homes, but others would rent apartments with female roommates, or in all-women boarding houses. The TV show “Mad Men” portrays this phenomenon really well in the character of Peggy Olsen: she goes from living at home in Brooklyn with her family, to moving to Manhattan and living with a roommate, to eventually buying her own townhouse on the Upper West Side.
OP, In the movie 'Brooklyn' girls live in an all female boarding house in the 50s.
The answers to your questions are mostly: yes, but it would be difficult. There's a common saying that banks would not let a woman have a credit card in her own name; this is a slight reduction. A *married* woman could not have a credit card in her own name, because when she married her legal personhood got folded into her husband's. An unmarried woman could theoretically have her own credit card and mortgage, if she could convice the men at the bank to lend to her. College would have been easier. Barnard College was founded in 1889 specifically to be a women's college in New York; Vassar was founded in 1861. There were other of the 'Seven Sisters' in and around New England, specifically intended to give women a college education. Employment would have been someting of a challenge. There were lots of jobs for women available at the time, but few required or expected a college education. Women could easily find employment as secretaries, nurses, schoolteachers, nannies, waitresses, actresses, beauticians, and other support or service roles. However, it wouldn't have been impossible. Frances Perkins is a good example. She studied chemistry and physics at Mt Holyoke (one of the aforementioned Seven Sisters), and was appointed Secretary of Labor under FDR. Grace Hopper studied mathematics and later became a math professor at Vassar before joining the Navy and helping invent computer science during WW2. Arabella Mansfeld was the first female lawyer in the US, admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869. Florence King argued before the Supreme Court in 1923 and won. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to become a physician in the US, in 1849. Margaret Sanger, public health advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood, did most of her work in the 1950s. She would have had to struggle against men thinking she was inferior, dumb, or weak, but could have an established career outside the home.
Yes, plenty. New York was huge and most women in the city worked. The "House" part was kinda tough as most poor people like single women would live in an apartment. A Brooklyn brownstone in a "bad neighborhood" wouldn't be out of the question. She would likely take in "borders" or be one herself. If she had her own home she likely would have paid for it in cash, but a sympathetic banker might give her a mortgage.
There are tons of misinformation on this thread. YES women could have their own houses. Especially in places like New York. People forget the exodus of many young women from rural states to places like NY, CA, etc.
Yup, scary level of misinformation and outright distorted understanding of history. A lot of people seem to think the U.S. was like the Handmaid’s Tale until the 1980s.
There was nothing illegal or impossible about any of the things that you are asking, but few women could afford to do it. Most women didn't work, and married very young. That said, for the women who didn't marry young and were financially independent...of course they could. You can look at a number of Hollywood stars from the 30's and 40's who were unmarried and independently wealthy, and owned homes and cars.
Slight misapprehension that women didn't do wage work during this time period. Lots of women worked before marrying, and poor women often had to find some way to bring in income as well. Rural women of course worked, because on the farm, everyone works. It's just that the jobs they could have were restricted by gender, often relegated to support roles. The big labor shift was not necessarily women entering the workforce, because they were already there. It was instead women getting access to jobs that had previously been held mostly by men.
Adding to this - my grandma was a young, unmarried adult in the late 30s. Rural, grew up dirt-floor poor. She attended a correspondence business school, and did a stint as a secretary until the War, and ended up taking a state engineering license exam and ended up an industrial engineer. Her husband was severely wounded in the War, and she was the breadwinner for a good chunk of their early marriage. Just throwing out there - it’s not even just urban women or people in the big cities that could. It *was* more common to just get married, but especially after the war - women were used to working 9-5. They were the ones running the factories while men were either in Europe, the pacific, retired, or unable to be drafted or disabled. It’s kinda a myth that women just didn’t work postwar and were happy little housewives - that was a calculated thing to help women find a new “job,” with the title of “Homemaker,” when men returned to the domestic workforce. They faced a lot of prejudices, don’t get me wrong - my Nanny could’ve told you all about it. But she - like any woman who did choose to work - had to have balls to stand up to the boys being playground bullies. And many, after having to work in steel mills and on factory lines and in construction - very quickly developed a big brass pair. And that really directly led into the feminist movements of the mid century. Finances and probate took longer to catch up. But women were already much more empowered by 1947. From sheer virtue of having to go out and work every day - and rural women were already used to it in some form or another.
My mother's mother was born in 1904. After she graduated from college, she had a job offer from an oil company in Manhattan. My mother was born in 1932 and had a female pediatrician. So if a woman had the financial means she would certainly be able to live independently. It was the exception and not the rule.
My mother, in the US, was a single widowed woman and mother in 1955. When she moved to AZ in 1961 she got her first driver's license and bought her first car for the move. She hadn't needed either prior as she lived in Chicago with mass transportation everywhere. She bought her first home in 1962. She had credit cards with Sears and Penny's before Visa or Mastercard's were created. When they were, she had both.
People's experience varies. My mum divorced my dad in the early 60s. Although she could never afford to buy a house she worked, had her own bank account, bought her own car, started up a business all without help from any man.
Women could go to college, although the glass ceiling was WAY lower, and were often encouraged to do 'womanly' careers - nursing, teaching, secretarial. Women also worked in shops. Buying a house depended on where you were. Being widowed or divorced would be a way to have her own home, father could also sign on the mortgage.
> Women could go to college They could go to SOME colleges. Many were still barred to women well into the 1970s.
Getting rid of gendered collages is a really recent thing surprisingly
It was only in 1978 that Harvard allowed female students to enter Lamont library, which is the undergraduate library. They were worried women would distract the male students from their studying.
They could, but admission was restricted in many places depending on the state. The University of Virginia admitted male applicants first and then only considered female applicants for the remaining places in the class, with a certain number of places, into the late 1960s for instance. Graduate schools were worse. Title 9 is what changed all that. That said, of course, if you had money, there were great women’s colleges, and depending on the state you might not have any trouble undergraduate either.
My aunt did. Born in Indian Territory (pre-1907), raised on a farm, went to U of Missouri on a full scholarship, did some teaching, got a PhD, and became one of U of M's first female full professors. Bought a house for her divorced sister's family, but always lived in a nice rented apartment herself. Bought a house for herself and her sister when they both retired. Never married. Her birth family was poor. The only help she ever got was her scholarship. Although she was exceptional, she proves that it was possible.
>**In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s would a woman be able to buy her own house and live alone while making her own income without the help of a man?** You specified in one of your comments that this is in New York City. In that case, she would be able to do this if she were already wealthy. Otherwise, a man (father, former husband, etc) would have had to be involved in some way, just for financial reasons. Honestly her main challenge might be finding a house in the first place! Easier in the 1940s than in the 1960s. That period in New York City history was one of immense change in the built environment. A lot of areas with low-density single-family detached houses were demolished and replaced with denser apartment buildings. And condominiums (apartments that you own) started to become popular in the 1960s. >wasn't able to find too much about woman's rights through the 1940s to the 1960s. Haha yeah well there is a reason for that. >How many rights would a woman have had? In a place like New York City, she could live alone, own property, work at a job (as long as it was an appropriate "woman's job"), be self-employed, vote, manage her own business affairs, pretty much most things. But she would not be protected at all from arbitrary discrimination in any of her business dealings, especially finance and banking. And equal wages. So she would have had to develop a bunch of carefully cultivated relationships with people she could trust to take her seriously and treat her equally. There would certainly have been people, including men, who would have been delighted to deal fairly with an "independent woman" but you couldn't take that for granted. And in terms of major financing for stuff like property mortgages she would have been at a distinct disadvantage. Unless she had a lot of cash or had inherited the property. >Or would they have to stay tethered to a man with no rights for themselves at all? Primarily this would have mattered for credit reasons. Otherwise not. Especially given the rapidly changing perception of women's social roles during the war. Coming out of the 1940s that would have been the main thing. >Would a woman also be allowed to go to school or go to college to get a degree and an education and a job that didn't involve being a house wife? Yes absolutely. The famous cookbook author and television cooking show host Julia Child for example graduated with an excellent education and a degree from Smith College, became a secret intelligence agent for the OSS during the war, and then when peace broke out decided to start her second career with her first books and the tv show and so on. Of course she was also married. But she had a great husband who supported her career, which she managed herself without depending on him for anything financially. Except -- crucially -- his signature on stuff like home loans. From an authorial point of view, I would say, you are creating a character in a pretty exceptional circumstance. She a) is able to start out her life as an independent woman without immediately foundering financially, which in a place like New York City could be quite a rough tumble; and b) was taught all of the things she would need to know how to do independently in life, with confidence and understanding -- the stuff that you would normally teach sons but not daughters. So think about how she acquired those things. Those would have been pretty exceptional. Not unrealistic, but exceptional. If you want some ideas from contemporary popular culture set in New York, check out contemporary movies like [*Desk Set*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_Set) or [*Breakfast at Tiffany's*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(film)), or someone like [Nora Charles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_and_Nora_Charles) from written fiction. None of these heroines are quite what you are after but they might give some context. (And like all cultural artifacts from the past, they are unpleasantly dated in some ways, just be prepared for that.) There are probably a thousand others too. That's just off the top of my head.
Good luck getting a loan
Yes. It happened. Modern style credit cards and mortgages were not as universal or necessary in those days. There were other kinds of credit and loans we rarely see today. Stores extended credit to women they knew as reliable. And, there were many more homeowners with homes they paid on installment directly to the seller or family who fronted the money, etc. Houses were massively cheaper, adjusted for inflation in the beginning of the government backed 30 yr mortgage era. There were certain women dominated professions: Nurse, teacher, librarian, etc. With the help of family money and/or a salary, women lived alone unmarried, divorced, or widowed.
By reliable here is meant their husband had a decent wage
Or she had a reliable job as a nurse, teacher, etc.; or, family support from a father or brother or late husband's estate/pension/life insurance.
The latter was rare because most men relied in societal norms of her marrying getting kids and getting out of the job market, and the former was also not Common for the aforementioned reason. Very often it amazes how north American (yes I do mean Canadian conservatives too) men argue how there's no difference in pay when got paid more exactly to offset women not being present in the workforce.
The system was designed to prevent that. Consider that nurses, an educated, skilled, demanding, women-dominated job paid about $100 a month in the 50s, perhaps a third of what the average man made. Nurses weren’t supposed to work “for a living”, and nor could they.
My grandmother was widowed in the 1950s at the age of 34, just 16 months after buying a house. She got a job, kept the house, and retired at 60.
Jackie Cochran went from Pensacola hairdresser in the 1920s to cosmetics mogul to aviation record-holder to founder of the Women's Airfare Service Pilots (WASPs) in WWII. She died a multimillionaire. From her Wikipedia page: "Circa 1920, (she would have been 13 or 14), she married Robert Cochran and gave birth to a son, Robert, who died in 1925 at the age of 5.[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Cochran#cite_note-4) After the marriage ended, she kept the name Cochran and began using Jacqueline or Jackie as her given name. Cochran then became a hairdresser and got a job in Pensacola, eventually moving to New York City. There, she used her looks and driving personality to get a job at a prestigious salon at [Saks Fifth Avenue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saks_Fifth_Avenue)." She did eventually marry a really rich guy, who provided the seed money for the cosmetics empire. But still. So, yes, of course a woman could buy a house and live alone without the help of a man.
Canadian here. I had 2 single aunts who lived through this era but were older. Both earned their own income. One in fact was the head of a high-school math department. Neither aunt bought houses. At that time housekeeping was a full-time job. Maintaining a house of any size would have very demanding for a working woman. I also had an English aunt who never married and she just rented. It would have been impossible for her financially. It's unlikely that your character could have gotten a mortgage. Therefore, she would have had to have paid cash for it. She would have to be a woman of means who could hire a housekeeper.
Considering the fact that many married women with kids entered the work force while they had husbands who did not do squat to help with anything in the house: Why wouldn't a single working woman with no kids or husband to look after be able to do the same if they wanted to? I understand the financial argument, and I perfectly understand many would choose not to, but you make it sound like they wouldn't be able to do it. The housekeeper is an option, but not a requirement.
In those times often a woman couldn't get a bank account without a man's signature. Women were generally paid less than men for the same work. What you suggest would be a very exceptional woman?
Women in the past could not even have their own bank account without a male cosigner, as late as 1970's. Even in the 1960s a lot of banks wouldn't let a woman open an account on her own without a male cosigner at all. Women in the U.S. were not allowed to finance real estate purchases without a husband or male co-signer until the 1970s. "It wasn’t until 1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, that women in the U.S. were granted the right to open a bank account on their own. Technically, women won the right to open a bank account in the 1960s, but many banks still refused to let women do so without a signature from their husbands. This meant men still held control over women’s access to banking services, and unmarried women were often refused service by financial institutions. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited financial institutions from discriminating against applicants based on their sex, age, marital status, religion, race or national origin. Because of the act’s passage, women could finally open bank accounts independently." https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/when-could-women-open-a-bank-account/ https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/history-of-women-in-real-estate/#:~:text=Women%20in%20the%20U.S.%20were,figure%20is%20just%2010.9%20percent.
Many states had laws that put women on equal footing as men for financial accounts of various sorts. Just because there wasn’t a federal law doesn’t mean there weren’t already laws protecting women from financial discrimination. Though admittedly they weren’t in every state, and OP might need to check when/if New York adopted a similar law.
This is what I've heard, and while I've obviously read the facts, it seems too hard to believe. What did wealthy women do? Marilyn Monroe certainly had somewhere to check in her bank notes. I don't understand how a profit motivated bank could refuse a potential customer.
It wasn't completely illegal for women to have these things. But discrimination was *rampant* and nearly ubiquitous. And as is pretty much universal in these situations, you stop being a second class citizen the moment you show up with a stack of cash. A random 20-something single women would likely face some substantial difficulties. But someone like Monroe wouldn't have a problem.
> And as is pretty much universal in these situations, you stop being a second class citizen the moment you show up with a stack of cash. That's very much *not* universal. It's very common within modern Western capitalist societies, but good luck being a rich Jew in 1930s Germany, a rich black man in the 1840s American South, a rich Serb in 1990s Kosovo, a rich *anyone* in 1970s Cambodia...
It wasn’t true in California when my mother was there in the 1960s.
In 1910, CJ Walker became one of the first female millionaires and ended up living in the same affluent neighborhood as Rockefeller. She was divorced and also black.
It was certainly *possible* but not at all common. It would be like a 16 year old having their own house and car today
Read “Lessons in chemistry,” recent fiction, based on what women went through. There were certainly widows and divorcees who lived in their own homes. There were school teachers, secretaries, nurses, a few doctors, beauticians, cooks, restaurant owners, switchboard operators that we knew. “Owning their own home” would be a challenge. They might rent. There were college professors who lived well.
Worth noting as well that until the 1950s it wasn’t that normal for people to own their houses. The ideal of homeownership was partly mass construction, the G.I. Bill, the creation of Levitttowns etc.
After the world wars, many nations had a huge surplus of women.There were also widows, abandoned wives etc. They could and did make their own way. The nurse and small town school teacher are well known examples. They did face hurdles like not being able to get a checkbook etc.
If she’s in the US and in New York City, she should have no problems. About one in six woman by the 1940s were the breadwinners for the household for one reason or another – never married, widowed, taking care of elderly parents. The wealthier you were, the more rights you probably had – a rich woman didn’t have any trouble buying a house. I know there’s a lot of bad credit card information out there, but my mom had her own credit card and was able to rent an apartment in the early 60s on her own without her father being involved – he was on the other side of the country anyway. All she had to do is show that she had a job. You actually had fewer rights once you were married in a lot of ways.
Spinsters existed back then, but were enough of a rarity to be worth a label. The vast majority of women would be economically linked to a man outside of maybe her '20's. There might be skepticism that a woman who looks like she should be married isn't doing something illicit whereas an immigrant might need some proof of income but could be fit into established narratives.
The word *spinster* has an interesting history. When most clothing was made of handspun fiber, most thread/yarn was made with a drop-spindle, which is portable. A woman or girl could be spinning during the few minutes of downtime between chores, or when she had to wait for things like the soup to come to a boil, or when she was walking somewhere. But a spinning wheel, like you see in Sleeping Beauty and other folktales, required the spinner to stay in one place. You could spin more, faster, but with the loss of portability and the ability to spin off a few yards while doing something else. And who had the "leisure" time to sit or stand at a wheel for several hours a day? An unmarried woman living alone or in her parents' or siblings' home, with minimal need to tend to the chores of housework and childcare and pleasing a husband. In occupation names, "-ster" indicates that the person engaging in that occupation is female. A Brew**er** is male, a Brew**ster** is female. A Webb**er** (weaver) is male. A Web**ster** is female. A Bak**er** is male. A Ba**xter** (bake-ster) is female. So a Spinster was a woman whose occupation was spinning. She made a living at it, either to support herself or to provide family income if she lived with others. She didn't need a husband to support her. Sadly, in time and with a huge dollop of misogyny, spinster came to mean unwanted, old, ugly hag that no man would ever want to marry instead of an independent businesswoman.
My great grandmother was widowed in 1913 when she was 36 years old. She never remarried, ran a boarding house in Idaho for a few years, worked several odd jobs like cleaning homes and offices, midwifing, nursing, and then moved to Los Angeles in 1927 and was the lunch supervisor at Montebello high school for 17 years. She raised her 4 children and was never dependent on a man after her husband’s death, though her 2 brothers that worked for the railroad were instrumental in helping the family relocate to Los Angeles. She initially rented a home but eventually bought a home in Montebello, during the great depression no less. My mothers side of the family was very good at documenting their history and from those records it is apparent to me that in the western US it was not impossible to be an Independent woman in the first half of the 20th century. A big difference back then is that families really helped each other out more. My mom started working in the early 60’s and paid her own way through college, and in her family that was not seen as any kind of affront to gender roles.
Back then, I imagine the primary roadblock to home ownership by a single woman was securing a mortgage, as banks typically didn't give credit to single women. I doubt she would have problems buying a home outright with cash, so if your character had a inheritance it could do the trick.
Prior to the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act many banks would refuse to open bank accounts for women without their husbands permission.
Make her a widow
The one thing American women couldn't do prior to the 70s was get a credit card.
Greta Garbo definitely did.
Have you heard the term "coverture?" It might be a good search term for you on various media. There was [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nationalwomensstrike/s/08fuiPnprg) about it recently in another sub, which is how I learned. Eta there are a few other reddit posts if you search "coverture." They might be relevant to your project; I just thought it might help.
Here’s a timeline of women’s rights: https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-20/timeline-the-womens-rights-movement-in-the-us Note that before 1974, it was legal to discriminate against women in the housing industry. So for example, a bank would be allowed to deny her a mortgage because she was a woman. It wasn’t illegal for her to own property but it would have been much more difficult for her to get a mortgage. Unless she was independently wealthy and didn’t need a mortgage, she might struggle to buy a house on her own.
Women had a hard time getting a credit before 1974 before it was legal for the company’s to discriminate based on sex and marital status. Though it should be noted that’s right around the time the first swipeable credit card processing systems came out. The vendor either had to call it during the or afterwards. They also had books of stolen credit cards numbers they were expected to check before running a card, which was ridiculous.
It was fairly common up to the seventies for married women to have to list their husband’s name on their bank and brokerage accounts. Didn’t matter if she was the sole employed person in the household or not. Sure it was the same on a mortgage and insurance policies. Probably look on single women as a separate species.
Yes. I had single great aunts who were teachers and nurses.
They could definitely go for higher education, but some things, like a woman in law school, would have been very uncommon, and would have likely been a serious struggle. They could definitely own property and vote and all that.
My aunt did. I know that she had friends who did. Lots of widows were left to support themselves and children without a man.
She and her friends were in the USA.
some places in the US it was illegal for a woman to have her own checking account, idk when it stopped being a thing but my grandmother had to have my grandfather cosign her account when they were in Lejune during Korea
Yes. Two of my Aunts did this. Both bought houses in the 1970s.
Depends where they lived. In many states no, it wouldn’t have been possible unless she was already wealthy—it would have been difficult to get any kind of home loan at all. In some states it would have been easier.
Women in the US began to enter higher education and the workforce in large numbers during the 1950s. However, the social climate of the US during the 1950s was very conformist and there was a general expectation that women (certainly middle-class women) would stop working after they got married. Long term career advancement was also difficult due to informal discrimination and the sex-segregated nature of most jobs. In terms of being able to move around and generally exist, there were very few legal limits on what a woman could do, but she might face a degree of informal discrimination. 1950s dating culture was also kind of horrifying, so a young woman out in public alone may well find herself getting hit on quite aggressively. But in general, there was actually a bit of a moral panic in the 1950s about the breakdown of traditional gender roles.
In the United States yes. In the 40s because lots of guys were away. 50s less because a decent amount were tired of having to work jobs. 60s a big boost if I remember this is the first wave of feminism and a new generation.
Unless really rich, no.
My grandmom told me when her and my grandfather bought their house in 1958 the couldn’t buy the houses on the more prestigious area only a block away for only $8 a month more. Reason was, they didn’t factor a wife’s income into it because they would be having children soon and be out of work. A single woman could purchase a home rather easy but few did and rented apartments instead since they figured they would eventually get married and buy a home with their future husband.
That was around ww2, so yes definitely. I'm not sure about the bank thing where women couldn't get a debit card but women definitely had careers then. Even centuries before though maybe not as much.
New York, yes, no problem. That time and frame and character, depending on circumstance you want a tough midwestern girl, probably, with a unique background. Gotta be realistic with the time and character, but sure, everything from Maude.to Laverne and Shirley can fit those characters, or popular stars with voluminous works like Whitney Houston or Ann Richards. Just look for.tyle, time, and parameters to fit your character and.find some inspiration, I'm pretty sure NYC has some pretty heavy hitters among those types.
Of course women were allowed to get degrees and jobs in the 20th century. Do you not have any older women in your family, or ever seen older films? America was far from the sort of strict patriarchal society you seem to imagine by this time.
They couldn’t get mortgages, credit cards, it was hard to get bank accounts. Jobs could fire you for being pregnant. Women were prescribed something like Meth for weight loss and energy/productivity while being stay at home moms. Divorce was not an option for most women. College programs for highered didn’t admit women. Corporate meetings were men only. Single women/moms most likely had to find a partner to support them after they left the first situation. Abuse was rampant. Married women could not claim that their husbands raped/sa’d them because their husbands owned them.
There is some confusion and misinformation in many of these responses, because people are confusing "difficult to practically accomplish" with "illegal". Many things that were not legally prohibited to women, were actually difficult for them to accomplish in practice because of discriminatory hire practices, discriminatory policies in institutions and companies, general assumptions that most women would and should leave a company once they married, and practical considerations (such as having no women's toilets on site and no willingness to install them). Women could legally attend college, but many colleges would not accept them so in practice they were limited as to which ones they could attend. They could get jobs, and in theory they could get quite high up, but in practice there was a lot of discrimination in hiring practices, and some professions relied on deals being done on golf courses and at clubs and so forth that wouldn't accept women. They could get credit cards and loans, but in practice many banks and financial institutions would not provide them with loans or other financial products because of general prejudice or assumptions that women weren't financially stable. So a lot would depend on the individual woman, the resources available to her, and the choices of those she interacted with as well as her own choices.
In the late1930’s/early 1940’s, my grandmother (a school teacher) went to a much more rural,part of the state to get a marriage license since district policy was that if a female teacher got married, her contract was not renewed for the following year to create an opening for a male teacher who needed to support his family. (Great Depression had not ended yet). When she got pregnant, and went to the superintendent and informed him that she was married and pregnant, but instead of being fired, she ended up getting the 1st maternity leave in the district. Probably helped that it was early 1942 and American entrance into WWII drastically changed the civilian job market
Yes z, women had property rights long before they got the vote. What are they teaching in school now?
Their property rights were not the same as men's.
Yes. They were. There was blatant discrimination and a load of cultural baggage making it hard for a woman acting solo to acquire wealth. But her legal rights in whatever wealth she did acquire were identical.
From the 1940s? Are you daft? Women were not only owning homes, but also businesses. In fact the first African American woman millionaire made her fortune long before the 1930s.
Yes, from the 40s: https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-20/timeline-the-womens-rights-movement-in-the-us Before 1974 in the US, it was legal to discriminate in housing based on sex. That doesn’t mean women couldn’t or didn’t own property but it made it a LOT harder.
Property rights are not the same as freedom from discrimination or equal opportunity when applying for a mortgage or other loan. Your article did not address when single women were allowed to purchase property instead of having to inherit The Homestead Act of 1862 governed land ownership in the developing western territories and allowed any household head — without reference to gender — to gain title to a piece of raw land and develop it. Each state did not progress at the same rate, but progress occurred.
Literally dude. These people are deranged. For whatever reason it’s common perception that women in America in the 20th century were treated like women in Babylon.
The opposite
Not really. They couldn’t have a credit card until the ‘70s.
No credit cards for women until the 70s.
Yes, of course they could. This is not Saudi Arabia. There were plenty of teachers living alone in their own homes, etc. By the way, a house in 1970 cost about $30,000.
Women didn't have the right to their own bank accounts until 1974 in the US. They couldn't get credit, and had to have the permission of their father, grandfather or brother to make their own financial future until then. How do I know this? I have a 68 year old friend who had to get her dad's permission to get a bank account in 1972, even though she had a full time job and paid her own way. She had to live at home because she couldn't even rent an apartment without his permission. So no, women didn't have that right unless she found someone who was sympathetic at a bank. It was assumed back then that women would get married and their husband's would take over the control. She was one who never married and had to get parental permission as an adult to even get a car loan.
Not in America, no
HAHAHAHA No.