As I recall, in the podcast of Karen's I can no longer find, she said that, under coverture, women could have money of their own but all of a man's wealth was community property. Men were responsible for the support of the family but women were not. She also explained that married women couldn't get credit or sign contracts simply because their husbands, alone, would assume all responsibility for their debts and contractual obligations and they would have none.
In this country (England) the thing about male relatives being guarantors was introduced following campaigns ( Dickens being very prominent) to end the "horror" of being imprisoned for debt. It ended that possibility by requiring a male relative to be the responsible person. Prior to this new "enlightened" law even quite aristorcatic ladies had had found themselves incarcerated just like debtor men. This of course was in a society where going to prison for non payment of debts was a regular thing. In a sense the feminists are right, during the Victorian era the push to protect ladies from any nastiness did indeed remove their responsibilities. These statutes were quite short lived as here they mainly disapeared in the 1960s.
I don't think a prison sentence for unpaid debt in necessarily a bad thing. People often rack up debt with no intention of paying, which is tantamount to theft.
Currently, in the US, I often see and hear arguments regarding credit scores being cruel and unusual punishments that are 'targetted' at oppressing women and minorities. The idea, here too, is that everyone is entitled to freely borrow money (because everyone deserves whatever they feel they need or want) and it has to be paid for by those who can afford to pay. In this instance, it's a broadly applied progressive tax system but, as we all know, white males would overwhelmingly bear the brunt of it.
Good stuff to know.
As I recall, in the podcast of Karen's I can no longer find, she said that, under coverture, women could have money of their own but all of a man's wealth was community property. Men were responsible for the support of the family but women were not. She also explained that married women couldn't get credit or sign contracts simply because their husbands, alone, would assume all responsibility for their debts and contractual obligations and they would have none.
In this country (England) the thing about male relatives being guarantors was introduced following campaigns ( Dickens being very prominent) to end the "horror" of being imprisoned for debt. It ended that possibility by requiring a male relative to be the responsible person. Prior to this new "enlightened" law even quite aristorcatic ladies had had found themselves incarcerated just like debtor men. This of course was in a society where going to prison for non payment of debts was a regular thing. In a sense the feminists are right, during the Victorian era the push to protect ladies from any nastiness did indeed remove their responsibilities. These statutes were quite short lived as here they mainly disapeared in the 1960s.
I don't think a prison sentence for unpaid debt in necessarily a bad thing. People often rack up debt with no intention of paying, which is tantamount to theft.
Currently, in the US, I often see and hear arguments regarding credit scores being cruel and unusual punishments that are 'targetted' at oppressing women and minorities. The idea, here too, is that everyone is entitled to freely borrow money (because everyone deserves whatever they feel they need or want) and it has to be paid for by those who can afford to pay. In this instance, it's a broadly applied progressive tax system but, as we all know, white males would overwhelmingly bear the brunt of it.