On permission

And why we need to learn to give it to ourselves.

Did you know that it was 50 years ago, in 1974, that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed allowing women to get a credit card in their own name? This law prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, receipt of public assistance, or good faith. Prior to 1974, banks required married women to have their spouse’s signature on credit applications. And single women? Lenders could deny them credit cards.

And it wasn’t just credit cards. Before this law was passed, women weren’t able to apply for loans without a male cosigner. Think: mortgages (thus homeownership) and business loans.

Or that it was only in the 1960s that women could “technically” open a bank account without their husband cosigning? But in reality very few banks allowed them to do so for a decade-plus. See the ECOA above.

And that “For much of the 19th century, the legal custom of “coverture” linked a woman's legal identity with her father or husband. Married women were thus prohibited from owning or inheriting property, controlling finances and entering contracts or lawsuits.” (Source: The National WWI Museum & Memorial).

Now add to all of this, the hundreds of years prior when women had to ask their husbands (or fathers) for permission to do pretty much everything — get a job, attend school, socialize.

That’s a lot of time having to ask others for permission and relatively speaking, very little time not.

What does this have to do with you and your business?

A lot. We’ve been asking for permission for so long that there’s a part of us that doesn’t realize we don’t have to anymore. To some degree, permission-seeking is like the air we breathe. It’s just there, the environmental soup we’re living in.

I love the story David Foster-Wallace tells in his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, “This Is Water.”