A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s Read Online Free PDF Page A

water in her kitchen was rebuffed when she tried to make the case that this constituted less than adequate support. In community property states, a wife did have a legally recognized interest in the commonly owned property, above and beyond the right to receive basic support from it, but the husband generally had exclusive rights to manage and control that property.
    Only four states allowed a wife the full right to a separate legal residence. When a woman married, most courts ruled, she “loses her domicile and acquires that of her husband, no matter where she resides, or what she believes or intends.” If a female student in California married a fellow student from out of state, for example, she would lose her in-state tuition. The husband had the right to determine the couple’s joint residence, so if he moved and she refused to follow, she could be said to have deserted him if he sought a divorce. Even when a wife lived apart from her husband, she could seldom rent or buy a home on her own. In 1972, the New York Times carried a story about a woman who could not rent an apartment until her husband, a patient in a mental hospital, signed the lease.
    In many states, a woman was obliged to take her husband’s surname. In some, she could not return to her maiden name after divorce unless, under the fault-based divorce system, she had proven that he was “at fault.” A woman who did not change the name on her driver’s license or voter registration upon marriage could have it revoked until she did. In 1971, an Illinois bill to allow married women to use a different surname for legal purposes was defeated, partly on grounds that motel owners could not safeguard “public morals” if married couples could register as Miss Jane Doe and Mr. John Smith.
    At least five states required women to receive court approval before opening a business in their own name. In Florida, a married woman who wished to operate a business independently of her husband had to present a petition that attested to “her character, habits, education and mental capacity for business” and explain why her “disability” to conduct a business should be removed. In 1966, an enterprising Texas woman turned this disability into an advantage, claiming that she shouldn’t be required
to repay a loan she’d taken from the Small Business Administration, because she did not have a court decree removing her disability to enter contracts and therefore shouldn’t have been granted the loan in the first place. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld her claim.
    Married or single, women had a much more difficult time than men in getting financial credit. Banks and credit card companies discriminated against single women, and if a single woman with her own credit card got married, they insisted that her husband become the legal account holder. In Illinois, Marshall Field’s department store would allow a woman to use her first name with her husband’s surname if she could prove she had an independent source of income. But in no case could she use her maiden name, explained a credit department spokesman, because “she no longer exists as a person under her maiden name.”
    In issuing a mortgage or a loan, a wife’s income was taken into consideration only if she was at least forty years old or could present proof that she had been sterilized. Until 1967, if a married female veteran applied for a Veterans Administration loan, her own income was not considered in determining the couple’s credit risk.
    The economic security of housewives who were not employed outside the home depended largely on a husband’s goodwill. Some states allowed husbands to mortgage their homes or dispose of jointly owned property without consulting their wives. Others held that rental income belonged solely to the husband. Still others permitted husbands, but not wives, to bequeath their share of the community property to someone other than their spouse. As of 1963, forty-two states and the