Could she have hired an attorney to run the “Notary Public office”? E.g. “I’ll own the office, you run it, you keep X% of the earnings.” or “I’ll own the office, and pay you Y pesetas a week to run it.”
Also, were these offices “for sale” in a hush-hush way, or was buying and selling those kinds of positions considered fully legitimate?
Quite interesting! I’ve had a dream for a while of finding some ancient loophole and getting a significant benefit.
And, again, in the contracts which I read in the Landman business, it would also have “X and Y, her husband”. It wasn’t the Iron Booted Female Conspiracy that did it-it was that X was the owner, and Y, her husband, and could later fuck up the works if he contested the payments in some divorce action.
Same here. I bought my first car in 1975, when I was 21 (turning 22 later that year) and had been working for five years. My father had to co-sign my loan application. He was an unemployed alcoholic but was clearly more reliable than I.
You should hear my reaction when I hear 20-something college-educated middle-class women say they “don’t need feminism”. :smack:
I’m actually not able to watch some TV shows because of how women are treated in the era. I yell and throw things. (Then again, I yell and throw things when I see women in current movies/tv doing the “helpless” routine while the Big Strong Hero Fixes All Scary Stuff For Her. [Luckily I only throw pillows, at the chair across the room. ] )
I agree with this. Lots of women held jobs, but the media, education, and marketing world, basically pretended this wasn’t the truth. Instead, they pushed “Father Knows Best” and other stereotypes and the public fell for it. There was great social pressure for women in the middle and upper classes to not work. In the working class, it was a goal for a man to not have his wife work, because her doing so implied that he couldn’t earn enough money for them to survive himself, neverminding that she was bored with being at home all day.
Working class women have always been a vital, if unrecognized (and often unpaid) part of the work force, even in the Middle Ages and in Biblical times as well.
Why weren’t women workers often accurately portrayed? Because the pen that created the stories and the paintbrush that portrayed women was wielded by men.
In the 1950s, my mother was not allowed to get a college degree in chemistry. She had to get one into textile chemistry.
In the 1970s, she tried to rent a car while on a business trip, and had to leave a large cash deposit, because “Women run away from their husbands, and use this credit card to get a car”. Who cares that she was travelling on a business trip for a company she started and owned.
And on the funny side, in 1997, my SO and I (unmarried) signed our first mortgage. He was listed as a bachelor, I was listed as a spinster. I wish I’d kept that paperwork. It was to damned funny.
No, she could not hold the position and what she sold was the office itself, not the job. It’s somewhat different now, but Notary Offices are not “just set it up” like a regular lawyer’s firm, in Spain: even though they are self-employed, Notaries need to have passed a special State Exam, received several years’ worth of training after the exam, and how many can be in a given location is defined by the central government. The government distributes them around but does not provide them with physical offices. Upon her husband’s death, she inherited the office itself but couldn’t inherit “the business”; she was able to sell the set of rooms and her husband’s folders and lists of contacts to the person taking over. Having to find a different location, set it up with appropriate furniture, put up his shingle and get anybody who used the Notary’s services regularly without those folders would have taken an enormous amount of money and time; it is a lot more convenient to take over another Notary’s office if possible than to set one up. People already knew where “the Notary” was, having to look for it elsewhere would not have worked so well.
My apologies, I was unclear the first time.
What about what should be the greatest right of all? The right to keep the child you carried for nine months and gave birth to, regardless of your marital status, without being branded with a Scarlet A? There was no help for a pregnant unmarried woman in those days. None. She was seen as an “unwed mother,” and the idea of single parenthood (or an unwed father) did not exist. Homes for unwed mothers would take them in and force or pressure them into giving up their babies for adoption. Any woman giving birth outside of marriage was considered “spoiled goods” and unmarriageable.
Actually, that only applied to white, at least upper working class, women whose children were considered adoptable. Unwed mothers have always been an accepted feature of the socioeconomic poor. The low standard living conditions available to them have until recently always been one of the primary ways the middle and upper classes discourage unwed motherhood.
When I was doing Land work, about 5 years ago, I would occasionally slip ‘spinster’ into a Mineral Ownership Report. I kept trying to find a way to put ‘old maid’ or something like that in, but, I never could find the right way/context to do it.
I could not wear pants to school until college.
After I was married, the bank would not let me open a savings account unless my husband was on it, too.
The McDonald’s in the next town (there wasn’t one in our town) would not hire girls. Boys only.
My father had an “unpronouncible” immigrant’s last name. He refused to Anglicize it for political reasons.
My mother took the Anglicized version of his name for practical reasons, as did her children.
In the 1970s, she was given all manner of grief about this, and even though it was clear that the names were similar enough to be essentially the same, she was underhandedly insulted by being accused of being a feminist or living in sin. Or simply causing undue confusion.
I remember when the California Supreme Court affirmed that it was legal for a married woman to take the last name of her choosing, she began to carry a newspaper article around with her, taking it out, and unfolding it in front of questioners.
Even as a young child I thought it was the stupidest thing that a court had to decide whether it was okay for a woman to have her own name.
It really wasn’t that long ago, although some of you youngers may not feel that way.
Before the first world war the largest career in this country was domestic servant, which employed about a quarter of the female population and a fair share of the male. Before the nineteenth century I don’t think there were any restrictions on female careers, other than the early modern ban on female actors. By the beginning of the twentieth century women were forbidden from being doctors and from some other careers. Before the modern period most women worked in the same jobs as their husbands, tilled the same earth, worked the same trades.
Women were forbidden, part-way through the nineteenth century, from working in coal-mines, also.
That depends on what was in the will, of course. If there was no will it would, at least in this country, all go to the older son, if there was one, or the oldest daughter if there wasn’t. In this country women were not, before the twentieth century, even allowed to give their property to their husbands as a gift, in case they were acting under duress, to it wouldn’t go to the husband, no.
As usual, it depends when we’re talking about. Until the nineteenth century this country gave custody to the father by default, thereafter it was reverse and men who were divorced were expected to pay maintenance.
By the end of the nineteenth century either could initiate a divorce on the grounds of cruelty or abandonment. In practice, however, most men couldn’t afford divorces while women could obtain for a much lower price, which they could require to be paid by their husbands.
Credit cards and student loans are quite recent developments, as are cars let alone car loans. Women could certainly own property or lease property, although there may have been some practical limitations, as opposed to legal restrictions.
The legal reasoning was that consent was implicit in the marriage vows, hence no rape in marriage. Inicentally it is still legal for a woman to rape her husband today, as the law of rape doesn’t recognise men as potential victims of rape by women.
William Blackstone wrote in the eighteenth century that it had once been legal to beat ones wife, although he didn’t give any examples or any information as to when it was legal. He explains that men were then held responsible for the crimes of their wives, and therefore were given the right to “chastise” their wives, but that was long in the past even in his day. Certainly there are cases of men punished both for committing and being victim of what we now call domestic violence or spousal abuse as long ago as the seventeenth century.
In Britain women were always a large percentage of factory workers, especially in mills. Women were thought to be less likely to form unions and strike. Textile mills were the largest industry in the country at the time. As mentioned women were also employed in large numbers in the first world war. The nineteenth century wasn’t characterised, other than in the upper classes, by homebound women.
It you’re looking at management and partnerships, those weren’t available to the vast majority of men either. As noted by others, women were generally in control of the money and the home. As for children, obviously the men had children too. I’m sure you want to believe your cartoonish version of history where big villainous men come home to women working their fingers to the bone, then beat them for burning dinner and beat their childrne, but it’s bullshit. A job’s a job.
I refer you to “The Making of the English Working Class” by EP Thompson.
Belfort Bax, that pre-War socialist, records an incident of a man being dragged off a boat to Canada by the police and taken back to his home to be forced by the law to support his wife. So no, giving your money to your wife was not optional, it was her legal right and the police would enforce it.
Eugenics, you mean? Was done as late as the 70s in some American states. Happened to people of both sexes, of course.
Of course, women can’t opt for sterilisation of other people.
Women never had “no right to own assets”, at least in English-speaking countries. I’ve covered the husband’s legal obligation to provide for his wife. I’m not sure what essential decisions you’re talking about.
Remember,history is written by the winner.