Emily Card Continues Credit Crusade

Credit and financial expert Emily Card describes a frantic woman who telephoned her one morning for advice. After a 25-year marriage, the woman’s husband wanted a divorce. He closed the couple’s department store, bank and other credit card accounts, which were in his name, and gave her $500 in cash “to tide her over” for an indefinite period, and left. Fearful of using up her limited cash on daily necessities like gasoline, the woman was thinking of asking her son to co-sign a gasoline credit card application.

Except for referring the woman to a sympathetic attorney, Card said she was unable to help. Even Emily Card, whose name is almost synonymous with equal credit rights for American women, cannot conjure up a way to get immediately needed credit for people who have never established a credit record.

These situations dismay Card. It has been 11 years since she first began confronting this kind of problem--dating to the federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, written by Card, which outlawed credit discrimination based on sex or marital status. But, as vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said in her endorsement of the new book Card has written about credit, “A law becomes a right when people learn how to use it. . . .”

Making Women Aware of Rights

Since passage of the law that was designed to end discrimination against all women and permit married women to establish credit records in their own names, Card has continued to crusade to make women aware of their rights. She founded the Women’s Credit Project while on the faculty at USC, founded the Women’s Credit and Finance Project at Harvard University, writes a weekly column on finance for Ms. magazine, hosts a cable television program on financial advice for women and recently published her book, “Staying Solvent: Comprehensive Guide to Equal Credit for Women.”

Interviewed recently in Los Angeles, where she does her television program, Card was still reiterating her most essential advice: “All married women should request credit reporting in both names (unless the husband has really bad credit, she adds). I advise women to keep credit in their single names. Men don’t change names, so they have credit stability. Every woman should have one separate bank account in her own name and one bank card in her own name. We don’t like to think about it, but it’s true that 50% of marriages end in divorce,” Card said.

She suggests that engaged couples obtain and go over each other’s credit reports to learn, for example, if one prospective spouse has a bad credit record. “It sounds horribly crass and unromantic, but if you don’t want someone’s credit on your record, you might want a prenuptial agreement.”

Women can’t depend on credit granters to look after their rights, Card points out. “As late as 1983, Bank of America had (application) forms out for Visa cards that required the husband’s signature and credit report on a married woman’s application (illegal since 1974).” Upon divorce, “the law says (a credit granter) can’t change credit on account of a change in marital status unless there is evidence of unwillingness to pay,” Card said, “but what creditors are doing is canceling first and asking questions later.”

Do You Need Credit?

In her book, a concrete guide to how credit works and how to get various kinds of credit, Card wrote the following test women--or anyone--might give themselves if they wonder whether they need credit: “(1) If you found yourself suddenly without income, could you exist for three months using existing lines of credit and credit cards? (2) If your refrigerator broke, could you easily charge a new one? (3) Can you cash a check virtually anywhere? (4) Can you always be assured that the credit cards in your wallet work for any normal situation of day-to-day living, or do you have to go from store to store to find the credit card that would work for the situation? (5) If you were given a job assignment and asked to travel to a distant city immediately, even though it was Sunday night, and there was no time for the company to issue you an advance check, could you cover all necessary expenses with the plastic in your pocket?”

This is the “up” side of credit, considerations that might have saved the divorcing woman Card described a good deal of anguish if she had considered her personal credit standing while she was married.

Woman are also facing the down side of credit--overextension--as is reflected in the title of Card’s book, “Staying Solvent,” and a chapter on what to do when you can’t pay all the bills, including information on which creditors will report late payments to a credit agency and which will not. Card said that according to Chase Manhattan Bank research, “at any given time 10% of Americans will be in financial difficulty. . . . Women had no experience of credit. Now they have to experience the down side, the risk. In business, men frequently take risks and are overextended. Very few women have experienced this.”

Studies show that women pay their bills “better” than men, Card said. One such study at Purdue University actually argued that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was bad because women should be entitled to more credit than men. Nevertheless, because they have been unaccustomed to credit in the past, women are more likely than men to panic when facing credit debts. Card described a woman who asked her if she should file for bankruptcy over what most people would consider an uncomfortable but not dangerous level of monthly payments.

Another reason women, particularly married women, should establish credit is that since the law was written, first-time credit has become harder to get, Card said. “It’s getting a lot harder (for first-time applicants) to enter the system,” she said, but many people aren’t aware of this. “People who have credit get solicited a lot. They think it’s easy to get credit.” Card said that in today’s credit market it is easier for a person just out of college and starting a job to get that first credit card than it is for an older woman who has never had a card in her own name before.

Women veterans are being sought to participate in a 40th anniversary memorial and commemoration of the end of World War II, an American Legion-sponsored project that will include activities beginning in July and continuing through Veterans Day on Nov. 11. Interested women veterans of any service may contact Anne Russell at (213) 851-3030.

While the sexual revolution has made society tolerant of a wide range of female behavior previously only “allowed” to men--such as premarital sex, drinking, going to singles bars--there has been little change in attitudes about rape, according to a study conducted by University of Michigan sociologist Barbara F. Reskin. “If a woman is raped, her character, reputation and life style go on the line, and often become a key factor in whether her assailant will be arrested, charged and brought to trial,” Reskin said in her announcement of the study.

Reskin found that defendants were less likely to be found guilty, even when weapons were used, when the victim had engaged in traditionally “improper” behavior such as going to bars or accepting rides with men they’d just met.

Even though it is illegal to admit evidence about the victim’s character and reputation in assault trials in Indiana, where the study was conducted (and in most other states), Reskin found that many jurors admitted to being influenced by what they learned of victims’ behavior and life styles.