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Comment by thursday0987 | Hacker News Reader

> Women couldn't sign a mortgage in the US in the 70's.

yeah you're going to need to provide a source for such a ridiculous claim. My grandmother has owned her house for much longer than that.

* edit: all you downvoters need to look at the claim being made instead of bringing up different issues. credit cards are not mortgages. "couldn't sign" is not the same as "needed a cosigner" or "discounted rates". the original claim implies that women could not own houses through a bank loan, which is very much false.

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It is ridiculous, but also true. It's not that there was a law prohibiting women from signing a mortgage, but there was no law prohibiting banks from discriminating against women - which they did by discounting their income or requiring a male co-signer.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1802323?seq=1

Women could sign a mortgage in the 70s (albiet discounted), so the original claim is false.

That's not a particularly ridiculous claim if you are familiar with the recent history of civil rights.

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-th...

Specifically there wasn't a law to prevent it AFAIK, but in practice banks denied women lines of credit without their husband's approval as a course of normal business.

your linked article is talking about credit cards, not mortgages. also its talking about the 60s, not the 70s.

you still have not addressed the claim that "women could not sign mortgages in the 70s"

As per usual, and especially true in the US, the story is complicated. There was no law on the books that prevented women from signing mortgages in the 60s, but there was systematic discrimination and discounting or ignoring a woman's ability to make good on a loan.

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refe...

> Part I discusses the extent of discrimination against women in this field. It concluded that such discrimination is wide-spread and takes two forms. First, lenders discount a working wife's income when she applies with her husband for a home mortgage. Second, lenders are less likely to make a loan to a single woman than to a man.

> yeah you're going to need to provide a source for such a ridiculous claim. My grandmother has owned her house for much longer than that.

Maybe not mortgages but this article from 2013: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/25-years-since-women-need_b_4... "25 Years Since Women Needed a Male Co-Signer". (Link should end "b_4164299".)

the link you provided is talking about business loans, not mortages.

the original claim was "women couldn't even sign a mortgage in the US in the 70s".

that is a false claim.

If you’ve decided to die on this particular hill, you will need to show the title.

Sure, own one by inheiriting or paying outright. Its the credit issue that prevented borrowing to buy one.

Our recently deceased Supreme Court Justice was instrumental in securing that right.

Here's a brief history for the Google-challenged: https://www.directlendingsolutions.com/women_and_credit.htm

the link you provided is talking about credit cards and needing cosigners.

there is nothing in your link that says that women couldn't sign a mortgage.

the original claim is that "women couldn't even sign a mortgage in the US until the 70s." this claim is false.

That smacks of pedantry. Sure, its correct, but says nothing about the issue of women buying property, and how they actually couldn't until the '70s. How is it informing this discussion, exactly? Other than earning imaginary internet points?

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