It's hard to believe, but it was only until fifty years ago that women got the right to make major financial transactions in their own names. Following enactment of legislation in the House and Senate, President Gerald Ford signed the Equal Opportunity Credit Act into law on Oct. 28, 1974.
Until that time, mortgages, business loans, and even credit cards in their own name were denied women. Unless they had their husband or another male co-signer, they were out of luck in securing things that men and women now take for granted.
Flanking the president were the sixteen U.S. Representatives who happened to be women.
Almost as incredible is that the sponsor of the change in the law to make this possible was a Republican: Rep. Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts, one of three women on the House Banking Committee and the chief sponsor of the amendment to the 1950 Federal Deposit Insurance Act that ended discrimination against women in financial matters.
"Margaret was part of the minority in the House but in those days things were different, less partisan, and her amendment carried," recalled Kim Heckler, author of the forthcoming biography of her mother-in-law entitled "A Woman of Firsts."
Kim Heckler recalled how Margaret was one of two women on the Banking Committee, the other being veteran Democrat Rep. Leonor Sullivan of Missouri (who initially opposed Heckler's amendment but eventually came around). There were 37 men on the committee.
"The year before the measure passed, Lindy Boggs had won the seat of her late husband [House Democratic Leader Thomas Hale Boggs of Louisiana] and joined Margaret on the Banking Committee," Kim Heckler told Newsmax, "During the mark-up process [the process of correcting the text before the bill is printed], Boggs added the words 'sex' and 'marital status' as categories of non-discrimination."
The bill passed the committee unanimously and, after to going through conference committee to make sure it had identical wording to the Senate version, passed the House by 355 to 1 and the Senate by 89 to 0.
Margaret Heckler would go on to serve 16 years in the House and then became Ronald Reagan's secretary of Health and Human Services and later ambassador to Ireland. She is remembered as a trailblazer for women in politics but it is this one particular act that became law 50 years ago that touched the lives of all American women.
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