PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2019-08-28 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Nine Things a Woman Couldn’t Do in 1971 – Truth or Fiction? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • Nine Things a Woman Couldn’t Do in 1971 Claim A Facebook post accurately lists nine activities from which women were banned in the year 1971. Rating True Like this fact check? Reporting In August 2019, the Facebook page Old Crone shared the following post , listing nine everyday activities women were purportedly prohibited from doing up until the year 1971 (with some commentary about subsequent related liberties). Beneath a black and white photograph of an unidentified woman was a list: The following list is of NINE things a woman couldn’t do in 1971 – yes the date is correct, 1971. In 1971 a woman could not: 1. Get a Credit Card in her own name – it wasn’t until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband’s signature. 2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant – that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of *1978*! 3. Serve on a jury – It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn’t until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states. 4. Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff. 5. Get an Ivy League education – Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women’s college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but, by and large, women in the ’60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold. 6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977! 7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to – spousal rape wasn’t criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again...1993. 8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn’t outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don’t mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010. 9.The birth control pill: Issues like reproductive freedom and a woman’s right to decide when and whether to have children were only just beginning to be openly discussed in the 1960s. In 1957, the FDA approved of the birth control pill but only for severe menstrual distress. In 1960, the pill was approved for use as a contraceptive. Even so, the pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. Some of those opposed said oral contraceptives were immoral, promoted prostitution and were tantamount to abortion. It wasn’t until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status. In short, birth control meant a woman could complete her education, enter the work force and plan her own life. Oh, and one more thing, prior to 1880 which is just a few years before the photo of this very proud lady was taken, the age of consent for sex was set at 10 or 12 in more states, with the exception of our neighbor Delaware – where it was 7 YEARS OLD! Feminism is NOT just for other women. KNOW your HERstory. In the order listed, they were as follows: Get a credit card in her own name Be protected from firing on the basis of pregnancy Serve on a jury Fight on the front lines Receive an Ivy League education Retain the ability to fight sexual harassment in the workplace Be protected by law from spousal rape Not be charged more for health insurance Obtain access to the birth control pill or contraceptive pills Each listing detailed unique parameters, laws, and entities involved in the extension of the listed rights for women. We examined each claim individually. Get a credit card in her own name. True. The post says that credit card companies could, and did, decline the extension of credit and credit cards to female accountholders before a law was passed in the mid-1970s. In 1974 , the Senate’s passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited credit-related discrimination based on gender, race, religion and national origin. A Department of Justice page about the law indicates that as of 2019, creditors may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, because an applicant receives income from a public assistance program, or because an applicant has in good faith exercised any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act. Be protected from firing on the basis of pregnancy True. Pregnant employees are protected by law from firings predicated on pregnancy. That was not the case in the United States until the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 . Serve on a jury True. As noted in the post, consideration for jury duty based on gender varied by state to quite a large degree. Challenges to individual laws were scattered across decades, but the post correctly identifies 1973 as the first year in which women were permitted serve on juries in all 50 states. Fight on the front lines True. In the post, its author correctly states that 1976 was marked the first time women were admitted to a military academy (West Point), and that a ban on women in combat was lifted in 2013 . It’s worth noting that the second issue still isn’t entirely settled , with some still advocating the decision be reversed. Receive an Ivy League education True. However, as noted in the Facebook post, different Ivy League universities began to admit women on an individual basis, rather than all at once. A portion about those eight schools — Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University — appears to be a direct quote from a 2014 CNN article: Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). With the exception of the University of Pennsylvania, which began accepting women on a case-by-case basis in 1876, and Cornell, which admitted its first female student in 1870 (also offering admission under special circumstances), women couldn’t attend Ivy League schools until 1969 at the earliest. Brown (which merged with women’s college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but by and large, women in the ’60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold. Florida is where wokes go to die... Please enable JavaScript Florida is where wokes go to die Harvard’s newspaper, The Harvard Crimson , reported on Yale and Dartmouth’s admissions policy changes in 1968 and 1971 , and in 2009, Columbia marked 25 years of co-education. Retain the ability to fight sexual harassment in the workplace True. The sixth of nine items indicated that the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977. During that year, three court cases upheld a woman’s right to sue her employer for sexual harassment. Moreover, sexual harassment was not officially defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) until 1980 . Be protected by law from spousal rape True. As with juries, individual states and jurisdictions often had their own laws about marital rape. It wasn’t until July 1993 that marital rape became a crime in at least [one] section of [relevant] sexual offense codes in all 50 States. Not be charged more for health insurance True. As observed in the Facebook post, gender rating (the practice of charging men and women different rates for identical health services) was prohibited by law in 2010. More specifically, it was legislated during the Obama administration under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare . Notably, some grandfathered plans retain the ability to charge more based on gender and discriminate based on health. Obtain access to the birth control pill or contraceptive pills True. In the post, its author correctly states that the birth control pill was approved in 1957 for menstrual problems, and in 1960 for contraception. It wasn’t until 1972 that the Supreme Court ruled that the Pill could be accessible to anyone who wanted it, whether or not they were married. In a postscript claim, the post claims the age of consent for sexual activity in most states in 1880 was between ten and twelve years of age. A notable exception of the age of seven in Delaware is added, a claim that has been kicking around the internet for a while: How could Delaware have the age of consent for 7 in 1880? from AskHistorians One historian commenting on the thread noted that the referenced statute was commonly misinterpreted, and a legal site explains more about the law: Sometimes misunderstood to refer to marriage, the age of consent in question actually had to do with the law of rape, similar to today’s statutory rape laws. Under English common law, which was adopted by Delaware and the other states, rape was defined as the carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will. ... Technically, the age of consent in the Delaware rape law remained seven until 1972, when the state completely overhauled its criminal code, replacing the old common law definition of crimes with a modern criminal code. The laws relating to rape and sexual assault have continued to be reformed. As recent controversies over sexual assault on campus have shown the question of consent as a defense to the charge of rape is still a matter for activism and reform today. It was further true that the age of consent in most states was between 10 and 12 in 1880 ; in other Western countries, it was between 10 and 13. The list was broadly accurate with respect to the liberties named and years cited. Reference to 1971 seemed somewhat arbitrary, but it was possibly simply the earliest year that one of the nine rights was granted to women in the United States. Items toward the end of the list, such as being banned from combat or gender rationing, did not change until as late as 2013. Article Sources + Forty Years Ago, Women Had a Hard Time Getting Credit Cards Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/forty-years-ago-women-had-a-hard-time-getting-credit-cards-180949289/#SPHt4Y2OfWoExYmm.99 Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter THE EQUAL CREDIT OPPORTUNITY ACT Legal Rights for Pregnant Workers under Federal Law 8 rights of pregnant women at work History made when women were allowed to serve on jury The first women of West Point How Women Fought Their Way Into the U.S. Armed Forces That WSJ 'Women In Combat' Op-Ed Is A Complete Disaster — But It Still Presents A Threat Dartmouth to Admit Women in Fall '72 Yale Will Admit Women in 1969; May Have Coeducational Housing 25 Years of Coeducation A Brief History of Sexual Harassment in America Before Anita Hill 10 Things That American Women Could Not Do Before the 1970s Marital Rape: History, Research, and Practice THE END OF GENDER RATING: WOMEN’S INSURANCE UNDER THE ACA Are Gender Ratings Illegal Under the ACA? A brief history of the birth control pill A Brief History of Birth Control in the U.S. How could Delaware have the age of consent for 7 in 1880? The age of consent and rape reform in Delaware Age of Consent Laws Posted in Fact Checks , Viral Content Tagged 1971 , age of consent 1880 , feminism , viral facebook posts , women's rights (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url