The year 1787 was historic for the United States, and not only because it was when James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote our Constitution. That year also saw an early crack in the financial wall built to keep women economically dependent upon men when Massachusetts passed one of the first laws allowing women to conduct business by themselves. The Femme Sole Trader statute gave any married woman the right to offer and accept transactions when her husband was out of town.
From the Femme Sole Trader statute, it would be nearly 190 years of uphill battles before women were fully acknowledged to be capable of maintaining their own finances. The 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which eliminated the common requirement that women have permission from their husbands to get a credit card, was the last barrier preventing women from controlling their own financial destinies.
