I’ve no cite, but I too believe that the social expectation was that the man surrendered his paycheck to his wife, and was handed pocket money by her.
I’m derive this belief from many examples of such in autobiographies, novels, etc…set in early 20th century. For instance, women all waiting outside on payday for their husbands working at the local mine/factory/whatever to get hold of the money before their husbands could drink too much of it.
The pocket money thing again changed a lot by location. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about my relatives’ arrangements, and they didn’t always match social expectations. For the first few months of their marriage, my grandmother’s clients would pay her husband and he would dole out pin money… a specially ironic name when her profession was clothesmaker. Then he went to war and she became the main handler by default, and that’s how it stayed after the war. Some time later, they moved and he got the bank’s “booklet” again… until she realized that all those restaurant meals were coming from their savings! She took it back saying “you’re stealing our daughters’ future!”
I know families where the wife never knew how much money her husband made, others were he said straightaway “I’m bad with money, you handle it,” and that was it.
When my great-uncle moved to Brazil (1950s), they soon realized that if they gave the men their pay they wouldn’t be there on Monday (still drunk or hungover) and often their wives and children would go hungry. So they started giving the money to “the legitimate one” (the wife), who would split it up with the other women as a function of need, and the women would make sure the men were at the factory on Monday. They had to stop doing this because it turned out to be illegal, but he said it worked a lot better.
IIRC many states had laws on the book requiring a “privy exam” (ie the wife had to meet privately with a judge to give her consent) before her husband could sell the family home.
My mother was only allowed to wear pants to school in the winter, and even then she had to change into a skirt or dress once she got there before homeroom. Most girls just wore them under their skirts. They were also allowed to wear pants during gym class.
My mother did have a shotgun wedding & baby in the early '70s and wasn’t allowed back for her senior year (meanwhile the administration bent over backwards so the piece-of-shit she was married to could graduate and play on the football team). My grandmother eloped with my grandfather during WWII. She wasn’t pregnant, but he’d joined the Navy and was off to the Pacific. As displeased at my great-grandparents were with the marriage they foot tooth & nail so she could finish HS. They had to get a doctor’s certificate that she wasn’t pregnant, and apparently at one point my great-grandfather accused the superintendent of being an enemy sympathiser over the way he was treating a military wife (both men being WWI veterans).
One of my great aunts went to medical school in the '30s. She too was assigned to the “Colored wards” for her residency. At least she wasn’t expected to serve as a model her male classmates (for OB/GYN stuff they either hired prostitutes, or brought a poor Black woman from the maternity clinic in).
Right off of the top of my head, is the leasing/selling of land for oil rights.
Legally, there may/may not be a requirement, but, the company’s wouldn’t lease without the spouse’s signatures. It’s a matter of practicality, not necessarily the law, but, the company’s would hold fast to it. Ergo, required.
Most of these, I suggest, are practical, not legal. If it was enforced, as such, it was a matter of contract law, not a male-domination law prohibiting the oppressed female from exercising their rights.
There were less than 4,000 people living in Camarillo in 1962. You and I were two of them. 
I’m sorry that happened to your mom.
Shortly after she graduated high school in 1934, my mother attempted to register for a night class in drafting. She got a lot of lip from the registrar for being a female, and they argued a bit about whether or not women could learn to draw straight lines, and finally resolved that if the instructor agreed to the onerous task of trying to teach a woman, the registrar would allow it. The instructor did agree, my mom took the course, and then embarked on an 18-year long career designing refrigeration systems and other things. Refrigeration stuff was for York Corporation, Other Things were for the US Department of Defense.
For every stinking job, every transfer, every promotion, everything, she had to overcome objections about her being a woman. “We have no women’s restroom”. “The men like to use rough language in the drafting room - we don’t want them to feel stifled”. “How will you get to work? You’re not saying you’ll take a public bus!?!”
She told me once she made about 40% of what the men did. She asked her boss about it and was told “Those men have families to support!”, but when she asked if she (an unmarried woman) would get a raise if she had children, there was NO LAUGHING.
Most prestigious colleges and universities in the U.S. were men-only 50 years ago. Many such institutions had ‘sister colleges’ of somewhat lesser prestige. A degree from Radcliffe wasn’t the same as a degree from Harvard, nor one from Mary Washington equivalent to one from U.Va.
My alma mater, Trinity College (the one in Hartford) went coed in 1969, and for several years after that, maintained a policy where at least 1000 of its undergrads (out of ~1600) had to be male.
Dressmaker was, in many countries, a good career choice for a woman, in the sense in which you speak. Depending on whether she chose to specialize or not and work for others or for herself, she could work part time setting her own hours (something not possible for a factory worker), she could be a manager and teach her own apprentices… My own grandma only had apprentices once, preferring to work on her own (she’s a lousy teacher, being one of those people who look over your shoulder while you’re doing the dishes - or rather under your shoulder, since she’s very short), but I know several ateliers which are all women; one of them has five full time, on location workers and seven specialists which take their work home. And the specializations are all kinds of things: embroiderer, trousermaker, cuffsmaker, ironer.
A story from 1976: my parents were in the final stages of getting their divorce, and my mother was buying a house of her own. But her name on one of the documents - can’t remember, at this much later date, whether it was the deed or the mortgage - was insufficient. But adding my name and signature made everything kosher, despite the fact that I was an unemployed 22 year old with no assets.
Peggy Seeger (Pete’s sister) summed the whole thing up nicely in I’m Gonna Be An Engineer
And there was a time a police officer could only arrest a man for beating his wife if they actually saw him do it. They would arrive at a house to find the woman bloody, bruised and battered and they could not do a thing about it. That changed when a few abused woman took the law into their own hands and killed a few of their abusers. Now if there is evidence of abuse, the cops have to take the abuser away and the state files charges.
I’ve heard men saw the even if O.J. did it, Nicole Brown Simpson deserved what she got because she (a divorced woman, mind you) was cheating on him.
I had problems in the late 1980s. I wanted to be first on the mortgage with my first husband (at least I could be on the mortgage). I was the primary wage earner, it made sense.
The bank couldn’t do it - the way the system was set up a mortgage in the names of two people were husband and wife and his name went first (what gender has to do with anything, I don’t know). That shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
Except when we divorced he moved out and I needed to get the statements - all the statements got forwarded to him - because he had a forwarding address at the post office.
It wasn’t just the mortgage - most of the shared bills we had listed him first.
For years I had problems getting my own bills.
I got remarried in the 1990s and sold that house (on which I’d managed to become the only owner through a quit claim deed - that didn’t solve the mortgage issue though - I had to do that through a refi) and bought a new one with the love of my life. I think I’m first on all the paperwork 
When I first went into real estate in 1982, the form contracts used was “John Smith and H/W (his wife) Mary”! I put an end to that really quickly by pointing out it was not only illegal, but incredibly stupid!
That one might not actually be stupid ( although it *is *stupid to insist that it be “John and his wife” rather than “Mary and her husband”) because some states have a form of ownership only available to married couples (tenancy by the entirety) which is different from the joint ownership with right of survivorship that I could get when buying a house with my sister
In high school we had to take tests to determine our best future job.
My brother scored extremely high in math. He was told to go into engineering.
I scored higher than him. I was told to go into teaching!
This is called presentism–applying the standards of the present to the past. It is always wrong.
Bullshit. No more wrong than it’s cultural imperialism to be against Al Queda stoning women or female general mutilation or selling your kids as slaves. All people long for freedom, dignity, health and economic opportunity- everywhere through all of history.
I think you’ll be very interested in this article, THE REVOLUTION FOR WOMEN IN LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY which details the legal changes which occurred in the 60s and 70s.
(My emphasis.)
The article shows the basis for the legal discrimination originated in English Common Law:
The article is eye opening, and a reminder of the legal discrimination codified into the various laws:
[quote=employment opportunities[In 1919, all federal civil-service examinations were finally opened to women, but each department head could specify the sex of those he wished to hire for any position. This was not changed until 1962.[/quote]
The account shows how SCOTUS ruling evolved over this critical period, from looking at laws through a rational basis, to Intermediate Scrutiny.
My mother’s medical school class was 50% female (in 1965). This was in India, though, which is remarkably progressive in some respects and horribly backward in others.
However, when my parents went to the UK in 1972 physician field was maybe 10% female.
But you didn’t have to worry your pretty little head about such things. Isn’t that a fair trade? :dubious:
As a secure man, I can’t imagine living in a world where I was supposed to be permanently in charge of another adult who was capable of taking care of herself. It would be like owning a slave. 
My school, a state- run girls’ school in the UK, finally added trousers as an alternative to skirts in the uniform, which was compulsory until age 16, two years after I left. Tp be fully accurate, Muslim girls were permitted to wear trousers plus the normal skirt, adding a little casual religious discrimination in to the mix, as well as meaning they had approved uniform trousers available.
The rule was dropped in 2003.
Incidently, the change happened immediately after the headmistress I had left, and a new male headteacher started.
I think I remember this. The north side school was Lane Tech., yes?
Yes.