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.
this post was submitted on 07 May 2026
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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).
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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!
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!
True, but it was just for propaganda reasons. It would be almost 20 years before the Soviets let another woman become an astronaut.
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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).
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!
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