… it was legal to deny a woman credit without a male co-signer.
I don’t have any recollection of knowing it was a momentous day for women when President Gerald Ford signed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) on Monday, October 28, 1974. I may or may not have watched the nightly news that detailed a new Federal law making it illegal for creditors to discriminate on the basis of sex or marital status. At the time, I did not possess a credit card and thus had never been denied. I was living at home and carrying a full credit load. I would have been focused on a full schedule that included methods classes and other subjects required for my second Bachelors – the Elementary Education degree. When I finally applied for an AMOCO card so that I could pay for gas when traveling to and from Brodhead, I signed the application myself never realizing that just 14 months earlier, my Dad would have been required to sign for me. So much has changed in my life and so much is at stake in this election.
“We are not going back.”
Knit+ Librarian 
I do have a memory of this because my parents were going through a rough patch and my mom moved out for a short time. But she was not able to get a credit card or sign the lease on the apartment without my dad agreeing to co-sign. I was in college but close enough to home that I recall the struggle and then the celebration (both the signing of that act and my parents’ reconciliation). We cannot go back.
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