{"id":92226,"date":"2016-07-09T00:34:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T00:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/credit-card-sexism-when-men-had-to-sign-for-women\/"},"modified":"2016-07-09T00:34:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-09T00:34:32","slug":"credit-card-sexism-when-men-had-to-sign-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/credit-card-sexism-when-men-had-to-sign-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Credit Card Sexism: When Men Had to Sign for Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">When the first British credit card launched 50 years ago it was mostly used by men<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">In the 1960s and 1970s, women were viewed as a riskier investment by banks and stores<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Women had to get their father or husband to sign for most loans even if they earned more than them<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"media-with-caption\"><figcaption class=\"media-with-caption__caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Media caption<\/span>Christine Edwards describes to her daughter how women were treated by lenders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Christine Edwards was 23 when she decided to buy a moped to ride to work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was one for sale at a local dealership &#8211; one where you pedalled before the engine kicked in. I had saved the 30% deposit and wanted a hire purchase agreement to cover the balance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, the salesman said Edwards had to get her father&#8217;s signature to secure the contract. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I explained my parents were divorced and I wasn&#8217;t in contact with my father but they wouldn&#8217;t change their minds. They refused to take my mother&#8217;s signature,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Alamy, Barclaycard<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Shoppers on the Kings Road in Chelsea in 1970 and a Barclaycard Advert from 1973<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This was Britain in 1970 &#8211; just a generation ago but a world away in its attitude to women.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was still this mindset that women got certain rights through the relevant man in her life,&#8221; says Prof Lucy Delap from Cambridge University.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Women had long been in charge of household budgets, but it was the husband who gave his wife the housekeeping money and held the financial power.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Women had an increasing amount of purchasing power. In 1951 about 36% of women aged 20 to 64 were in work. By 1971 this had risen to 52%, but women were still considered second-class citizens by lenders.<\/p>\n<p>Susan Woolley, from Chester, who earned a third more than her husband, ran into problems.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wanted to buy a three-piece suite on hire purchase soon after I got married,&#8221; she says. &#8220;But I had to get my husband&#8217;s signature even though I earned \u00a313 per week while he earned \u00a310 a week. I was extremely annoyed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Susan Woolley<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Susan Woolley earned more than her husband, but wasn&#8217;t allowed to sign for a hire purchase<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>While women were fed up with attitudes out of step with reality, few were prepared to take on the conservative culture. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;d grown up in an environment where poor treatment was accepted,&#8221; Edwards says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were used to it. Don&#8217;t forget that at this time all the boys earned more than what we did for doing the same job. It wasn&#8217;t until those wonderful women at Dagenham went on strike that we realised we could do something.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Industrial action by women at Ford&#8217;s Dagenham plant in 1968 led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970. Five years later the Employment Protection Act introduced statutory maternity pay and job reinstatement rights. <\/p>\n<p>Yet everyday financial discrimination continued. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Kath Dawson<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Kath Dawson got her first credit card in 1973 &#8211; the year Barclays started promoting them to women<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Kath Dawson, from Bury, says: &#8220;We needed a washing machine and I saw an ex-display one in a shop. I went to buy it on hire purchase but I was told my husband had to sign for it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had to plead with the staff to allow me to take the paperwork home to get his signature as he worked in a different town. It meant the washing machine was in his name even though I made the payments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She later decided to sign up with the AA in case the car broke down and filled in the form, putting herself as the principal driver.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When the membership cards came through my husband was named as the full member and I was the associate member even though I had paid for it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The credit card, first introduced to the UK by Barclays Bank 50 years ago, represented a break with the past. While it wasn&#8217;t actively marketed at women for the first five years, a woman didn&#8217;t require a male guarantor to sign her application.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Barclaycard<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    The first Barclaycard was produced in 1966<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;I got a credit card when they first came out in 1966,&#8221; Catherine Petts says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was a graduate with a degree in economics, working in the finance industries. I got one because I thought I looked quite sophisticated using it in shops!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dawson got her first credit card in 1973, the year that Barclays began actively promoting them to women.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I got it to help balance my finances and I didn&#8217;t need a male guarantor. I was afraid of using my credit card when I first got it. I had it for emergencies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-with-caption\"><figcaption class=\"media-with-caption__caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Media caption<\/span>A look back to when men were assumed to hold all the financial power<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 finally outlawed discrimination against women seeking to obtain goods, facilities or services, including loans or credit.<\/p>\n<p>However, a news report in the Times in 1978 revealed some retailers were still asking for male guarantors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the end it was the economy that drove the change,&#8221; Delap says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the 1970s banks and retailers could use the excuse that fluctuating interest rates made it difficult to lend in general.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But they couldn&#8217;t use that in the 1980s. The government was telling banks to lend more to stimulate growth and credit card use boomed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                 <span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Sheena Fraser<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Sheena Fraser started working for a bank as a teenager. She wore a suit like the male staff instead of the overall given to female staff as a protest<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>However, some women found it impossible to get a credit card because of financial discrimination they had faced in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Sheena Fraser, who worked for a bank in the 1960s, says her staff current account was transferred to a joint account while she was on honeymoon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It said &#8216;Mr (my husband&#8217;s name) and another&#8217; and they also changed my contract to temporary staff.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I later realised I couldn&#8217;t build up a credit rating of my own because I was the second person named on the account, as well as on rents, loans, mortgages and so on. So getting a credit card in my own name still eludes me.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My widowed friend faced the same problem. Her husband&#8217;s credit card was withdrawn immediately on his death and she had difficulty getting her own card without a credit history.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gender discrimination back in the 60s and 70s still has ramifications for women today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr class=\"story-body__line\" \/>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Find out more<\/h2>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Listen: 50 years of the credit card<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Read: How credit cards changed our attitudes to money<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr class=\"story-body__line\" \/>\n<p>F<i>ollow Claire Bates on Twitter <\/i>@batesybates<\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Follow <\/i>@BBCNewsMagazine<\/a><i> on Twitter and on <\/i>Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the first British credit card launched 50 years ago it was mostly used by men In the 1960s and 1970s, women were viewed as a riskier investment by banks and stores Women had to get their father or husband to sign for most loans even if they earned more than them Media captionChristine Edwards <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/credit-card-sexism-when-men-had-to-sign-for-women\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}