By Lynda Kirkpatrick
We are only days away from electing our first woman for President of the United States. This is especially exciting for those of us who grew up during the 60s when the liberation of women was on the rise for women’s rights.
We stand on the strong shoulders of women who played a major role in the achievements of women being recognized and accepted as an equal human being. It may seem like these laws were always around, however it was not that long ago. The right of women to own and manage property today is equal to that of men, but full financial autonomy didn’t come about until late in the 20th century. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that a woman could access a line of credit independently without a man to cosign her application. It took another decade for the courts to rule that a husband doesn’t have the right to unilaterally take out a second mortgage on property held jointly with his wife.
It’s easy to forget that many of the rights women in the United States enjoy today are less than a century old. From suffrage to wage equality, legal protections we take for granted were hard-won, thanks to the efforts of activists and advocates throughout the 1900s.
Women still struggle today against a real estate gender gap. Women spend an average of two percent more than men to purchase a home and get two percent less return on their investment when reselling. A significant obstacle to economic parity has yet to be overcome.
From the 1970s until the 1900s, the battle for women’s property rights and ownership was one of the longest and most significant. It wasn’t until the 20th century that women were legally granted the right to own property without their husbands or other male relatives having control over any property bequeathed or allotted to them. This lack of legal protection severely limited women’s financial autonomy.
Subsequent legal advances, including the right to apply for a home loan and take out a line of credit, have also made it easier for American women to celebrate the important milestone of homeownership and enjoy financial security and independence. By the beginning of the 20th century, most women could legally own property. However, women’s property rights were slow to progress and scattershot through much of American history. It varied according to a woman’s state of residence and race.
By the late 1700s, some states had begun to move towards granting women limited property rights. New York was among the first, passing an act in 1771, that gave women a voice in how husbands managed their joint assets. The Act to Confirm Certain Ancient Conveyances and Directing the Manner of Proving Deeds to Be Recorded required the wife’s signature on any deed to the property she brought into the marriage in a trust before her husband could sell or otherwise transfer it. Significantly, it stipulated that a judge must meet privately with the wife to confirm that her approval was not coerced. Although women were still not allowed to own property independently, for the first time they had some say in how it was managed.
Maryland and Massachusetts followed suit, expanding limited property rights laws to include women. In 1787, Massachusetts began allowing some married women to conduct business on their own, so wives of merchants or traders could continue running the family shop while their husbands were absent.
The limited advances of female property rights in the late 1700s and early 1800s only applied to women of European descent. Slavery was still practiced in America during this period, and enslaved women did not have property rights of any kind as they were legally considered property themselves.
Native American women were also excluded from the limited legal protections extended to white women until the mid-1800s, which coincided with emancipation and an expansion of property rights for Black men and women.
By the beginning of the 19th century, property rights for women were starting to gain legal traction. Connecticut paved the way by recognizing the right of married women to execute wills and stipulate prenuptial and marriage agreements that allowed a man other than her husband to manage her assets. However, this law didn’t grant women financial autonomy, but it did prevent husbands from having control over their wives’ property.
With the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act in 1848 and the Act Concerning the Rights and Liabilities of Husband and Wife in 1860, New York dramatically expanded the property rights of married women. Besides the right to independently conduct business, women could hold sole ownership of any inherited or allotted property, as well as file lawsuits independently. These two laws became a model for other states to extend legal protection to women property owners over the following decades. By 1900, every state had given married women substantial control over their property.
Today, the right of women to own and manage property is equal to that of men. Full financial autonomy didn’t come about until late the mid-1970s when a woman could access a line of credit independently without a man to cosign her application. It took another decade for the courts to rule that a husband doesn’t have the right to unilaterally take out a second mortgage on property held jointly with his wife.
Despite legal protections for property rights, women still struggle against a real estate gender gap. Women spend an average of two percent more than men to purchase a home and get two percent less return on their investment when reselling, a significant obstacle to economic parity that has yet to be overcome.
As for Alabama, although the time for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution has passed, the legislative and judicial steps toward the establishment of gender-neutral laws reported evidence of a remarkable movement in this state toward sexual equality under the law. Clearly, in the absence of a constitutional mandate, both legislative and judicial steps toward sexual equality are reversible. The wealth of new legislation that is producing legal sexual equality in Alabama highlights the curious failure of the Alabama Legislature and the legislatures of fourteen other states to recognize the need for the Amendment by ratifying it.
In the past five years, the legal institutions of both Alabama and the nation have re-examined those areas of the law most asymmetrical in their treatment of men and women and have corrected some inequities based on outdated sexual stereotypes.
Alabama is currently addressing the once-taboo subject of family violence. At the federal level, the discussion of employment opportunities has expanded to include topics such as comparable worth, fetal protection from workplace hazards, and child care.
Until the 1979 amendment, the father had the primary right to sue for an injury to his minor child and the mother could bring suit for injury to her minor child only if the father was dead, had deserted the family, was in prison under a sentence of two years or more, was confined in a hospital for the insane, or had been declared mentally incompetent. The justification for the disparity between the mother’s and the father’s right to sue under the statute lay in the father’s legal duty to support his minor children. The father has the primary duty to support and maintain the minor children, therefore, the parent with this primary obligation is entitled to any damages recovered as a result of injury to a minor child. The Code section governing actions for the wrongful death of a minor also gave the father the primary right to sue and granted the mother a cause of action only “in cases mentioned above.
In 1979 the Alabama Legislature amended the portion of the section that specifies who may bring an action for injury to a minor child. The Code now provides that if a father and mother are living together as husband and wife, each has an equal right to bring a suit for damages. If the father and mother are not living together as husband and wife or if legal custody has been vested in either party or some third party, the party having legal custody has the exclusive right to bring the action.
Women in Alabama still face difficult obstacles. Women in Alabama would benefit from stronger enforcement of equal rights laws, better political representation, and other policies to improve their status. Alabama ranks 30th in the nation for women’s employment and 33th in women’s health. Alabama does not ensure equal rights for women. Women still earn only 77 cents on the dollar to what a man earns. Women in Alabama are most likely to die from cancer and heart disease. Women in Alabama are more likely to live in poverty and do not have a college education.
Alabama women have the least political representation than any other State in the nation. House of Representatives Robert Aderholt has never voted in favor of one single bill to benefit women, including the Violence Against Women Act and the Fairness Pay Act. With over one-third of the nation’s women and girls calling the South home, a lack of progress for women in the region is a setback for the United States overall and especially for the South.
In a dangerous and unprecedented move, the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that frozen embryos are children under state law. Granting personhood to eggs fertilized and frozen in a laboratory is preposterous on its face and well outside of scientifically established norms, and the implications are broad and chilling.
Alabama Gov Kay Ivey turned down the expansion of Medicaid which has resulted in the closing of many rural hospitals. In some areas in Alabama, pregnant women in the state have to travel up to 70 miles to access ob-gyn care. Limited access to healthcare exacerbates the risk of preterm deliveries, low birth weight, maternal mortality, and infant mortality. These risks are already alarmingly high in Alabama and throughout the United States, despite being a high-income nation. Alabama has the fourth-highest rate of maternal mortality in the country. Alabama also experiences the third-highest rate of infant mortality. Moreover, for those who survive, there is a devastating lack of infrastructure to support infants and families.
Women in Alabama fare worse than their counterparts in almost any other state, burdened by lower earnings and economic opportunities.
Facing unequal pay, anti-abortion legislation, and workplace bias, women are making tough decisions when deciding where to plant their roots. And now, with state-level barriers to conceiving and carrying a pregnancy to term, the pressure is heating up. Alabama’s Supreme Court’s ruling that a frozen embryo created through IVF will be considered children under state law has set off a flurry of panic over the fate of stored embryos and the future of fertility services and family planning in the state. The court’s decision proves that reproductive legislation is constantly changing, and women will bear the burden of keeping up with the changes. Facing unequal pay, anti-abortion legislation, and workplace bias, women are making tough decisions when deciding where to plant their roots. And now, with state-level barriers to conceiving and carrying a pregnancy to term, the pressure is heating up. The court’s decision proves that reproductive legislation is constantly changing, and women will bear the burden of keeping up with the changes.