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1 - Politics, Markets, and Boundaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2018

Chloe N. Thurston
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
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Summary

A belief in spontaneous progress must make us blind to the role of government in economic life.

– Karl Polanyi, 1944

Sharyn Campbell married her law school classmate when she was twentyfive. Shortly after, the couple picked up from New York and moved to Washington, DC. The year was 1970. When it came time to buy a car, Campbell filled out a loan application. The loan was approved, but she was taken aback when she noticed that the lender had issued the credit in her husband's name and not her own. Not only had Campbell applied for the loan independently, her husband had no credit history to speak of and a less compelling work history than she had. This happened again when she applied for a bank card, finding that, too, issued in her husband's name only.

Already frustrated by these two experiences, the couple's biggest shock came when they decided to buy a house. Both lawyers with relatively high incomes and stable jobs in the federal government, they found a place within their price range and applied for a loan from the local VA office. The loan officer told the couple that there was only a fifty-fifty chance that Campbell's income would be counted toward the loan, because of the risk that she might become pregnant and quit her job. In order to get a loan, Campbell needed to submit “an affidavit to the VA promising not to become pregnant and assuring them that I would continue to work under any circumstances.” She did get the loan, but learned later that she was much more fortunate than many others.

Initially, Campbell had assumed the problem had something to do with her recent move to DC – perhaps Washington lenders had not caught up with the times. Reflecting two years later, she said, “It didn't occur to me that this would have happened to me in New York if I would have stayed in New York after I had gotten married also.”

By the time she was twenty-seven, Campbell was at the forefront of a movement to transform women's access to credit. She had become active with the Women's Legal Defense Fund, which had been inundated with credit-related requests during its first few months of existence.

Type
Chapter
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At the Boundaries of Homeownership
Credit, Discrimination, and the American State
, pp. 1 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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