But even after the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, women in the USA still experienced huge discrimination in housing because we could not get a mortgage or home improvement loan. (Or an auto loan or credit card, either.) Until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974, even women with high paid jobs or wealth from other sources could only get a mortgage or any other kind of credit if we had a male guarantor.

As you might imagine, this discrimination hit single, widowed and divorced women and lesbian couples particularly hard. As it did households consisting of several employed female relatives and/or female friends/roommates who because of circumstance or choice were lived housing with no grown men.

Until the passage of the federal Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988, women with their own firms and professional practices in most states also could not get any kind business loan without a male co-signer and guarantor.