Women in the USSR were in space before American women could open a bank account
1mon 11d ago by lemmy.world/u/K1nsey6 in latestagecapitalism
https://femmefrugality.com/myth-busting-womens-banking/
It's a funny myth but not true. Women were doing their own banking in America as far back as the 1700sm I'm not super up on my Soviet space programs but I think that's a few years earlier.
Yes, and black Americans became fully equal citizens in 1868. /s
You can't judge history and civil rights off of the exceptions or the ideas written on paper. I'm sorry. Acting like this is what the meme is talking about is just denying centuries of patriarchy in America.
The article literally says
the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed (1974), which, among other things, required banks to consider credit applications in a woman’s own name regardless of marital status
Gee, I wonder why a very specific act had to be passed to deal with this "non existent" issue that was solved in the 1700s. Gee. Weird.
Though, again, depending on where you lived, you may have already been protected from that discrimination by state law for deposit accounts in technicality if not practice.
Just an absolute garbage article you linked. Seriously. Reconsider your ability to think critically if you can't understand how much this article is trying to downplay patriarchy from this quote alone.
Women were still largely dependent on being married and dependent on their husband to have any form of banking well into the timeline the meme is referring to. That article is like saying "I couldn't find a law specific to race in the Jim Crow South related to voting".
I don't mean to overuse the analogy of racial discrimination. But I feel like people don't actually understand how discrimination and laws actually work in reality when it comes to patriarchy. So, I'm hoping you at least understand it for other historical contexts.
Laws aren't written to be "X identity group can't do Y". And trying to analyze the actual material outcomes by only looking for laws like that is going to give you the results the article you linked came to.
Laws of discrimination are written to be vague enough that the powers of white supremacy and patriarchy are allowed to be enacted at individual levels on mass scale - without directly writing them down.
Edit: this was originally just the /s comment. But holy shit that article they linked was so bad and ahistorical I couldn't stop editing. Seriously. Please learn to think about what you're reading. Don't just upvote a comment because they had a "source".
Bless your heart.
The article explicitly says that many women faced barriers.
Similarly, many Soviet women were not astronauts.
Sometimes I wonder if people don't read comments they reply to; or if more and more people seem entirely incapable of comprehending what they are reading.
You can't say "Bless your heart" and then follow it up with not actually arguing anything. Nothing you stated is in contradiction to my comment.
My comment and the original comment (and article) are not even discussing the USSR. It's irrelevant to what is being discussed. Bless your heart, you really tried to put words together. You tried. At least your username is fitting.
Maybe you forgot what post you're in?
The meme, to which the original comment was responding:
Women in the USSR were in space before American women could open a bank account
Was my comment or even your original one debating the validity of when the USSR had women in space? June 16, 1963. No ones debating that.
The original article you linked and comment you made is what is being discussed by me mate. Why are you talking about the USSR in response to my comment that mentioned nothing of the sort. I'm disagreeing with your statement on women's rights in America and the arguments made in the article. Do you think major legislation was passed in 1974 just for fun? To fix a problem that was fixed in the 1700s?
I know your brain hurts. You seem to be incapable of even understanding what you're disagreeing with. Just stop mate. You're embarrassing yourself.
What on Earth?
Yes. American women could open a bank account well before anyone ever went to space.
Maybe English isn't your first language. But, if I said, women cannot run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds, it would be obviously false because many can.
If you're demanding some percentage of women, well that's a different claim and frankly I'd imagine the number of female cosmonauts was also seriously restricted (they and their partners better not have said anything naughty about the party.)
This doesn't seem that confusing.
Yes, and some black people voted in the Jim Crow South. Like, I hope you can understand how ridiculous it would be for someone to argue about black people's voting rights being uninhibited because of exceptions. But that is fundamentally what you are doing with women's rights.
Dude. I don't know how else to explain this to you except through analogy. You seem to have a literal mental block when it comes to understanding patriarchy.
This isn't about a "certain percentage". You are fundamentally looking at "the exceptions that prove the rule" and instead saying "no, actually these exceptions were not exceptions at all. They were the norm".
Or you're just being a "technically Andy" and you aren't actually interested in having a discussion. You're just interested in being "technically right". If that's all you want. Sure mate. You are right that some women had individual bank accounts in the 1700s. Is that all you want? Like, wtf, are you that incapable of actually discussing historical structures on a level beyond individual anecdotes? I never said that this was wrong. Your use of exceptions to reach a generalized conclusion on women's rights for banking pre 1974 is was is wrong. It's what is wrong with the article you linked.
You are just proving your ignorance of having any understanding of patriarchy with every response. You won't actually be able to understand what my initial comment was talking about until you just admit your own ignorance to yourself.
Good luck mate. I hope you do some reading or something. I can't help you understand through Internet comments alone.
You can apply some common sense though. Women opening bank accounts was not some fringe thing only available to a few in 1975. It was the norm. In a city, the vast majority of banks would be open to women. Maybe there was one old fuddy duddy bank that refused to do it. But the vast majority would.
This is how anti-discrimination laws always work. The only way an anti-discrimination law can pass is if the vast majority of the population is already onboard with it. Laws tend to be passed banning discrimination when the tolerant majority gets tired of putting up with the bullshit of a bigoted minority. Until that threshold is reached, the standard is always "let people and companies decide on their own."
Jim Crow was defeated when the vast majority of the US population had come to the point where they believed racial discrimination was wrong. It was the rest of the society collectively telling white people in south "we're tired of your shit."
If most women in the US could not open a bank account in 1975, then the vast, vast majority of banks must not have been offering them accounts. The only way that would happen is if the vast majority of the population opposed women having bank accounts. And if that was the case, there would have never been the political will necessary to pass an anti-discrimination law. Anti-discrimination laws tend to only be passed when they're banning forms of discrimination the majority already opposes.
Your comment is significantly more intelligent than the dude I was responding to. I first thought it was them responding again but quickly realized it wasn't after a few coherent sentences. So, thank you for the reply.
I would say the flaw of my analogy in comparison to the Jim Crow south is a fundamental part of patriarchy that is different than that of race based discrimination. That is, that patriarchy punishes women for going outside of the established norms. And, since most women are indoctrinated into filling a specific role (house wife) a lot them are not directly subjected to the discrimination directly. Meaning, they maintain the position that society expects of them (being submissive and subjugated) and are allowed privileges for maintaining that role.
So with banking, for example, women can be in different situations that obscure the patriarchal structures. It's why trying to analyze this hierarchy based on historical laws is insufficient. Women in the past could be
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Fulfilling their expected role as a house wife. Have all finances dependent on their husband. But, maintain their role in patriarchy. This is the vast majority of cases in the past. Most women never even considered having a form of financial independence.
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Fulfill their expected role as a house wife as above. But, have some form of income of their own. Many of which would submit that income to their husbands control - but in some cases may have individual banking. As long as these women were not attempting to push too far outside of the patriarchal structures they would easily be allowed independent banking (especially if they were white and in higher class position).
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Women not fulfilling their role as a house wife. This is a much more complex situation. Most of these women remained under their father's financial dependence for banking. Or just existed in society purely on a cash based structure. Banking and credit were not like they are today as they were in the past. An unmarried women seeking banking or credit in the past would be doing so to place herself independently as a member of the business (capitalist) class. This was very simply just not going to be allowed by patriarchal structures. Again, this doesn't need to exist as some law written down. We can look at the history of business in this country. It is a structure only allowed to be accessed by white men for most of its history.
And your last paragraph is just incorrect because of these structures of patriarchy that keep women passively accepting their roles. The VAST majority of women seeking independent banking were absolutely being denied access. It's just that the vast majority of women were not even attempting to gain access as they remained (happily but more often not) within their expected role. The idea that laws are only passed when the majority of the public agrees is just historical inaccurate.
Patriarchy is a complex subject very often overlooked and not well understood by many on the left. It is intermixed with race and class based structures of our society and is often obscured by the benefits white women obtain from "falling in line" and maintaining their expected roles. They are given more freedom within white supremacy and patriarchy by being submissive to it.
From your comment I can tell you have a lot more capability of understanding it than the other commenter. I'd suggest reading more on the history of patriarchy and understanding how intersectionality plays a role within it.
I literally cannot make it any more simple; women can run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds. Even though many women cannot actually do so, the statement is true.
women can run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds. Even though many women cannot actually do so, the statement is true.
No, the implication of this statement is that all women can do this. It's not true.
That's not how English works...
Game this out a bit for me, why in the meme, does this part refer to a very small subset of women:
Women in the USSR were in space
And this one has to refer to all women:
before American women could open a bank account
why in the meme, does this part refer to a very small subset of women:
Women in the USSR were in space
Well, for me it's basic knowledge of space travel, and the seemingly obvious fact that the USSR didn't send all of their women into space?
Context matters. That is how English works (for better or worse)
Ok. You're just a "technically true" guy. God, it's fucking exhausting. You're just telling me you're incapable of discussing/understanding what my original comment, and your linked article, were even talking about.
I made the mistake of reading the article you linked and responded to it as if you actually understood it or held that position. You don't even understand the subject enough to even argue from the position of what you linked to in the first place.
I responded to the meme and pointed out the inaccuracy.
That inaccuracy does not mean I think women had equal access to banking, nor does the article. I'm not sure why you're trying to argue a point neither my comment nor the article I linked is trying to make.
No, you're literally just being a bad faith reductionist mate. At least I hope so. I really hope you're not arguing such an inconsequential point this far into a thread.
And that article is a purposely written essay meant to reduce a complex system of patriarchy and intersectionality into simply a list of laws and generalizations. That's my criticism of you AND that article. But you're not even responding to that criticism. You just keep repeating your bad faith reduction over and over without addressing anything from my initial comment.
I'm allowed to criticize you and the article beyond some artificial restrictions you want to add through your bad faith reductionism.
I’m allowed to criticize you and the article beyond some artificial restrictions you want to add
Sure, it's the internet. You can do what you want.
It just seems bizzare to keep trying to argue against a point no one was making...
It'd be like if I wouldn't stop responding to people in this thread going "yeah, but what about the Gulags? And could women who weren't members of the Party be Cosmonauts? Why won't you respond beyond your artificial limitations!?!"
It's just kinda weird.
You're incapable of responding to criticism mate. You literally just keep picking a single thing to respond to that isn't even being contested. What was my last comment about? Seriously. Your response doesn't even address what I was critizing you for. You might as well be responding to my criticism with "nuh uh" like you're a child.
They're exactly zero Soviet Astronauts.
They are called Cosmonauts.
Dangit! Cosmonaut kept popping up into my head but I couldn't be bothered to look up the difference.
Just to be double extra, Chinese astronauts are tiakonaughts.
Seriously? That's cool, did not know about all these different translations/words etc. I've got to look into this, thanks!
Taikonauts*
There are not doctors in Germany either. Not were there any academics in the whole of Russia.
They're called arzt. or Doktor. That's not helpful, though.
That's not a good analogy though. Cosmonaut isn't just a translated term of astronaut. It's different on purpose.
Just a PhD is specifically different from MD, even though both are doctors.
No their jobs aren't as different, but it's very much a definite prescriptive difference, one are people who went to space from the USSR/Russia, astronauts are American/European and Chinese spacefarers are taikonauts.
Just one random counter example: wiki/First Women's Bank (New York):
It opened in 1975 and was part of a broader movement to address the financial needs of women who faced barriers in obtaining credit and financial services from traditional banks.
There was enough of a need for this 50 years ago that it made literal capitalist financial interest to make it happen.
Financial freedom in a modern word can be privileged (but absolutely essential for actual survival) and groups (like women, ie half of humanity) can be denied the necessities. If a women needs a man's signature to get a loan, have a credit card, or even open a banking account, they are not free from that man. And that (one aspect) really changed only in the 80s (slowly & with newer gens).
Saying some women had bank amounts in the 1700s is like saying "land of the free" in reference to USA (at any point in history actually).
Or saying how racism in USA ended with a (any) specific law.
The "meme" is still funny in comparing a basic necessity for a majority vs bcs ofc not a notable % of any human groups have been to space (even including billionaires).
If a women needs a man’s signature to get a loan, have a credit card, or even open a banking account, they are not free from that man. And that (one aspect) really changed only in the 80s (slowly & with newer gens).
If you read the article, you'd know that in general this was usually the case way farther back than the 70s.
Yes, there were more gaps but it's far from what the meme implies.
The meme also implies that USSR women had access to space. Both ends of the meme are not a strictly accurate comparison, just a "funny" way of saying that women in USA didn't have universal access to banking guaranteed by a country-wide law up until the space race.
To each their own.
I would also point out that it's incredibly unlikely any women critical of the Party, or with husbands who were critical of the Party, were allowed to be astronauts.
So, I felt some context to demonstrate that American women had been banking for a hundred+ years by the time there were Soviet astronauts.
Exactly.
A bit like saying North Koreans have nuclear weapons while black ppl in USA are discriminated against.
While it is a fact, it's also clear that the situation in USA is a bit better than 200 years ago whilst the average DPRKean does in fact not have access to a nuclear weapon.
I don't think ppl on Lemmy would think no woman in USA had a bank account prior to the (19)70s. Just as they wouldn't think USSR shipped millions of female tourists to space.
I don’t think ppl on Lemmy would think no woman in USA had a bank account prior to the (19)70s.
You have more faith than I do. Right now, someone is explaining to me in another thread how donald trump is actually part of a deep conspiracy with the Dems to keep elections electronic so they can both rig them...
People are really dumb.
And the link I posted does not at any point say that all women had access to all banking forever, simply that there is a lot of context that's missed by claims like this, that come up reasonably frequently.
It's a good link, busting the myth clearly and with good sources.
However:
1862: First state (California) allows women to open bank accounts regardless of marital status.
But that's still a century before female cosmonauts, so I'm just being pernicketty really.
I love and encourage persnicketiness!
I also feel that technically, at least according to the source, my comment is correct.
As the piece notes:
Women could participate in the economy — including banking — in Colonial America.
To me, this meets the "American women could open a bank account" criteria but that's just my opinion and one with which reasonable people can disagree.
Though, the piece's source gets delightfully snarky about it:
Though a small percentage of all bank customers, women held accounts in many northeastern banks in the early national period, a fact that apparently has eluded business and women's historians alike.
Your are indeed technically correct (but I maintain that as the worst kind of correct, who trusts bureaucrats?), but the added information that that section details as once/if women married, their finances, assets, bank accounts became their husbands.
So while unmarried and widowed women could do banking, meaning that women could - social pressure and expectations made it difficult to impossible for the majority of most women's lives.
You are correct in the bar of "a certain subset of >1 women could open bank accounts" was true for, potentially the entire history of banking in the US/thirteen colonies. (When was the first settler bank set up in N. America? Probably a Spanish one in the Caribbean, but British people probably didn't use that one.)
We are mostly in agreement, just drawing the line either when first crossed (fair and valid) or when all could cross (racial discrimination aside (and that's a big aside)).
Salutations and respect to a fellow lover and encourager of persnicketiness.
but I maintain that as the worst kind of correct, who trusts bureaucrats?
Love it!
Yup, you make great points. I just think that if the comparator on the other side is "women in space" we're not talking about a large percentage of the population. (Though, an admittedly fair perspective is the number of women as a share of the total people in space.)
I'd foolishly overlooked the considerations of what kind of line was drawn on the space side. That's a really good point.
Thanks for the polite, pernicketty, chat.
Thanks for the polite, pernicketty, chat.
Likewise!
Honestly, for what it's worth, folks like you are what give me hope for the Fediverse. So, thank you.
If there were no uniform laws, which there were not, women could not bank
Woops, this aint Lemmy.ml so you cant ban all the replies fact checking your misinfo
Wish I could upvote things more than once lol. Idk how many things I'm banned from cuz I called out the user CowBee for being a state paid poster or bot or something. 2 years, 18k comments or something insane like that. All shilling for the CCP in China. Mod there must also mod other places.
I was banned for pointing out that the tank leaving tiananmen square was not peaceful it had just been part of a slaughter of university students. This is on the same level as federating with nazi's
When you call out someone as state-paid or a bot, you should be banned.
a) you're rude
b) it's against the rules in most places
c) it's dismissive of their point of view
d) what the fuck do you know, Adolf? It's insane of you to "call out" others as bots or state-paid posters, when you know absolutely nothing
Permaban is a little extreme, but I get it.
"Calling out propaganda bots is against the rules"
This has a lot of "what was she wearing, maybe she was asking for it" vibes.
So you, knowing absolutely nothing about the situation or the kinds of things the other person said or anything other than I said it was weird they made 18,000 posts in only 2 years, 9,000 a year, all with paragraphs upon paragraphs of pro-ccp info.
You think I should be banned and I'm rude and offensive for pointing out that's odd? Really? Hilarious you try to "call me out" for something when you know absolutely nothing. Hypocrite.
No one has fact checked anything. Just spewed emotional based scripted propaganda responses
You are getting fact checked on every comment. the cope is unreal
I suggest reading the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_Russia#The_Revolution_and_Soviet_era
It's more complex than this. First, obviously the bank account thing is a myth. When people cite that women couldn't open a bank account, they're mostly referring to the date that a law was passed that prevented banks from discriminating against women. Plenty of banks were already doing business with women. The law just required all banks to do so. Hell, the first bank for women in the US was opened in 1879. It was still a very important victory to have anti-discrimination laws passed. But if a woman wanted to get a bank account in the 1950s or 1960s US, she could.
https://daily.jstor.org/a-bank-of-her-own/
But more critically, as the article I linked notes, the Soviet Union was not a paradise for women's equality. Here's the polit bureau in 1975:
But beyond top leadership, the problems were more fundamental. Yes, the Soviets were an immense improvement over what came before in terms of women's liberation. But women's liberation in the USSR was never a cultural movement like it was in the US. The party opened up some career opportunities that were previously closed to women. And cosmonaut was a high-profile example. But in the 1970s, the Soviet Union had a higher gender pay gap than the US.
This was a great read, thanks!
Women were allowed to vote in the US before anyone was allowed to vote in the USSR.
But can they vote in USA in 2028?
Is there talk within the legislature to repeal the 19th Amendment? I will bet you literally any amount of money that women will be able to vote in 2028.
The working class was able to vote in election once the Tsars were removed, and the ballot extended to the bourgeoisie and land owners in 1937
Remind me how many parties they could vote for?
They didn't vote for parties. Elections happened at a local level where people knew candidates personally. Elected local councils ('soviets') would then elect members to higher councils in a 'tiered' system, all the way up to the supreme soviet.
A good-faith criticism of this model might be that it has a high degree of inertia, in that it may respond slowly to sudden changes in popular opinion.
So the Bolsheviks weren't the dominant party that eliminated all the others after they won the Civil War?
And remind me what happened to public figures who spoke against the premier in any way? I'm sure nobody complained because they loved the government so much that they'd never say a bad word about it...
Yes, that's right. The point I'm making is that elections worked very differently to the party politics people are used to, with an emphasis on people personally knowing their representatives. To the average voter, the bolshevik party wasn't very relevant when they were choosing between two guys who lived on their street.
And what happened when those representatives disagreed with the inner circle?
They in turn elected candidates to put forth their disagreement
Again, what happened to high-ranking politicians who openly expressed disagreement with the premier and his cabinet?
Could you cite some specific examples of what you lre talking about?
Can you find any records of USSR politicians criticizing high-level government figures without consequence?
I think, there were some more events, and maybe they involved elections, too. And after that all the other parties were eliminated, because it turned out that it's easier to rule when there's no other options
Because eliminating representatives who might disagree with you is much more democratic than allowing a multiple party system.
I've never seen anyone arguing more for their own oppression than you. Multiple parties is completely undemocratic, which is the authoritarian government you claim single party countries have.
So why is having one party better?
There are NO parties if you have a representative government. Instead of arguing you could just say you have no clue how any of this works but you are open to learning.
So why did the USSR have one?
They had central organizing committees. They did not have parties. You seem to keep doubling down on your ignorance
The purpose of a system is its outcome. If the elections only ever produced comically landslide victories for the ruling party, then that is a guarantee of a sham election.
Even if you assume every Soviet voter was a full-on true believer Communist, you would still never have such outcomes in fair elections. You would end up with multiple communist parties, each practicing a slightly different flavor of communism, vying for the vote.
Any voting system where the ruling party endlessly wins overwhelming victories is guaranteed corrupt and a sham.
While this isn't true for the US, it is true for Switzerland. Valentina Tereshkova went to space in 1963, while Swiss Women's Suffrage was established by a referendum in 1971.
True, but it was just for propaganda reasons. It would be almost 20 years before the Soviets let another woman become an astronaut.
The difference is that the Soviets always saw women as equals unlike the US who still doesn't
This is a gross over-simplification. The gender pay gap in the USSR was larger than that of the US in the 1970s. In other words, the US had better pay equality than the USSR. And they managed to do that in a planned economy where all the wages were directly set by the government!
While Soviets had no money so they didn't need bank accounts.
Not sure about Soviet Union but in communist Poland people had lots of money. They just didn't have anything to buy with them.
In Soviet Russia, bank account opens you!
did you know that Adolf Hitler was born in Idaho, US and was put in power in Germany by FDR?
and 100 more false factoids!
Wrong comm?
And before man went to space they sent stray dogs.
Okay. And how was life living under the thumb of the USSR? 😂
lot of people say it was fine, they had a home, food, work etc. does that mean it was roses and glitter, most certainly not but then go walk through a homeless encampment in the US.
I know many people from USSR before the fall, they say life was pretty good then (insert your favorite tearful emoji here).
By that same logic, all kinds of insects and animals that were sent to space before humans are more important than humans? Or women? Personally I put Laika the dog above many people, regardless of nationality, race or gender.
Seriously who gives a fuck about space and banking when you have porn? Which in fact was legalised in Denmark as the first country in the whole world! Now that’s progressive!
Love how this got downvoted. Capitalists and their anarchist friends are so hilarious
Capitalists and Anarchists are friends?
News to me.
Doesn't CIA fund them occasionally?
It was downvoted because it's not true.