Battlin' Bella Abzug & Sharron Frontiero: Advances for Women in 1973

May 28, 2025

May 29th, 1973:  

On this day 52 years ago, NY Congresswoman “Battlin' Bella” Abzug introduced the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to prohibit credit companies and banks denying women credit of their own. She did this after American Express made the mistake of telling Abzug she couldn't get its card---even as a member of the U.S. House---unless her husband co-signed.

That discrimination included making single women also obtain their daddy’s (or little brother’s or son’s) signature on an application for a loan or a card. Part of the creditors’ justification for that co-signature requirement was the fact that the 1973 median income for men was $11,468 and for women $6,488. Ironically, the more education a woman had in the 1970s, the greater the pay gap between her earned income and that of a male co-worker with equivalent education.

The ECOA didn’t undo that horrendous pay inequity, but it did provide women the liberation of being able to purchase things privately—without having to ask permission of the men in their lives. It also paved the way for women to own their own businesses. But it wasn’t until 1988 that the Women’s Business Ownership Act made illegal the requirement that a male relative (spouse, brother, son) co-sign on business loans. Today, small businesses are more than 90 percent of America’s commerce and 45 percent are owned by women, who also make up the fastest growing segment of new entrepreneurs.

1973 was a good year for women’s rights in other arenas. Earlier that month, Ruth Bader Ginsberg won the first case she argued in front of the Supreme Court. As director of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project, she represented Air Force Lt. Sharron Frontiero, who'd been denied the housing allowance and other benefits for her husband that military wives automatically received.

"I went to the pay office thinking it was just an administrative error," said Frontiero. "I was told I should be glad that I was in the Air Force at all. That nice girls don't make demands, don't cause trouble."

The Air Force claimed it had denied the benefits because Frontiero hadn’t proven her husband was financially dependent on her. It did, however, grant automatic dependent status for wives of male service members, whether they themselves were employed or not.

RBG argued that this discrimination based on sex "assumes that all women are preoccupied with home & children...(Such practices) keep women in their place. A place inferior to that occupied by men in our society." She believed the Air Force violated the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which includes an equal protection guarantee. That gender, like race, is an immutable characteristic and, therefore, should be subject to strict scrutiny, meaning the government would have to prove a compelling reason for the discrimination. The Court agreed.

While the case didn't mandate strict scrutiny for all sex-based classifications, Frontiero’s case was a significant victory for gender equality, particularly within the military. It established that sex-based classifications in federal law are subject to heightened judicial scrutiny, meaning they must be justified by a compelling government interest.

Frontiero’s willingness to challenge the Air Force is one of many brave legal challenges to the status quo in 1973 that I included in the photo essay punctuating the narrative of TRUTH, LIES, AND THE QUESTIONS IN BETWEEN. When I was researching it, I easily called up information and her photo on the Air Force’s websites. Now, sadly, after the Trump administration’s “DEI purge,” I no longer can find her there.