This feels like a feminist issue. Is it?

[plantsitter]

l found out that my credit card account had been cancelled because I haven't used it for so long. Fair enough. But then when the woman on the phone suggested that I apply for a new one, it became clear I can't have one.

DH and I have a joint account that his wage is paid into and all the household expenditure comes out of, and from which we each get paid an equal personal allowance. This allowance is nowhere near the required minimum of £500 per month income for a credit card.

So I don't qualify for a credit card because I have no income except child benefit, which goes from my account into the joint one. I asked if you can have a joint credit card. No. I asked if DH could have a credit card. Yes, because it's his personal income. Even though it's paid into an account in both our names and we are married, it's his personal income. He can apply for me to have a card on his account.

I'm really upset by this. I feel like DH's chattel and to be honest it's easy enough to feel like that as a SAHM anyway. If DH was paying me what he would have to pay a professional to do what I do, I would easily have enough for a credit card. My name is on the mortgage, which is a hell of a lot more than any credit card limit would be.

Its not that I actually need the credit, it's the principle. Isn't this discriminatory against people who are at home full time with small kids (usually women)? I can see (even if I don't agree) that it would be logical if we weren't married, but we are legally bound to each other anyway! Am I over reacting? DH thinks I'm being a bit hysterical about it but I feel really affronted!

On their own Northey. Obviously not huge credit limits but as I said, they also give them to students without salary income.

This is not a feminist issue, this is a twat in a bank issue and there's plenty of those about

Right celine - but her DH with the same money going into the same joint account would get a higher credit limit, presumably?

Not necessarily. Lending decisions are made using a variety of different criteria as I have posted up thread. One of the most important is how much credit people have elsewhere. But yes, due to his income it is likely he would get a higher limit at time of application all other things being equal.

It's worth pointing out that once you have a card they will usually raise your credit limit based on how you use it rather than income - so a SAHM who is approved could in theory catch up the credit limit by using and paying off the card and not defaulting on payments.

Eh? You don't have an income, so you don't qualify for a credit card under the banks criteria.

That's not a feminist issue. My DH is a SAHD and would not qualify for one either.

I don't get why you find that hard to understand.

There is a difference between thinking something is fair - which you may well do- and assuming it therefore can't be a feminist issue.

To me, a feminist issue is one which disproportionately affects women. To say that something cannot be a feminist issue if it also affects some men is a very narrow interpretation. By that reckoning sexual assault isn't a feminist issue, because that can happen to men too.

I see it as a bit like the legal definitions of sex discrimination. There is direct discrimination - 'I won't give you the job because you are a woman', but there is also indirect discrimination. Which, very broadly, is about things which disproportionately affect women (with a defence which roughly translates that the disproportionate affect is reasonable in the circumstances). I see feminism in a similar (though not identical) way. There is the stuff which is because you are a woman, but then there is a whole wider range of things which are still feminist issues.

I don't think banks refusing credit to people with no incomes disproprtionately affects women tbh.

I think I would challenge their initial decision to cancel your card. Does your original agreement allow them to do that?

I do think it's a feminist issue. It's not a matter of the OP 'not having income' -- she does have equal access to adequate income, she just hasn't earned it herself. That's much different to someone who is unemployed or a student and has no access to any assets.

Someone who is unemployed might struggle to get a credit card, but they would at least have an income in their own name. Students have an income of sorts in terms of student finance / loans, but in these cases the banks extend credit on the liklihood of future income.

The OP does not have an income other than child benefit which is under the £500 per month criteria set by the bank.

Unless the credit card agreement is joint and severably liable with her DH, if she defaulted they would have no legal recourse to make him pay with his income as it is not her income it is his. She may have access to her husbands income, but only as long as he agrees to provide that access to her.

The bank don't care about the strength of the relationship or the amount of childcare she does. They just care that she does not have an income that meets their criteria.

This is not a feminist issue as the bank apply the same criteria to everyone. Income of over £500 per month or no credit card.

How would someone unemployed have an income in their own name?

Youlllaugh has explained very well what indirect sex discrimination is and how if SAHMs were not allowed to have credit cards it would be a feminist issue. I have explained that banks don't operate like that so in this particular instance there is no issue other than a bank worker giving incorrect information.

Why we are still debating this when the op has not applied or been declined for a card, and other posters have said they have applied and been approved for cards as a SAHM, I have no idea. Incidentally i'm not sure why there is debate about what people feel is discrimination - it seems a waste of time when the law is very clear about indirect sex discrimination so it doesn't matter what we think in this situation, what matters is whether it is lawful. If it helps, I can think of a specific sex discrimination case from earlier this year where the tribunal panel (it was an employment case but same law) used government statistics about unpaid volunteer work and part time working to establish women are more likely to undertake such work and therefore the way the organisation had behaved by discriminiating against those two groups was indirect sex discrimination - purely because those groups are made up of significantly more women then men.

Economic dependence on a spouse/partner is a huge feminist issue. Economic independence in general is a socio-political issue not bound by feminism. Decisions made that disproportionately affect women more than men is often a feminist issue but depends on other factors such as level of disparity and impact.

Dreaming - if they got Income Support / Pension or whatever, that would be in their own name.

This is not a feminist issue IMO because the bank is not saying "You can't have a credit card because you are a SAHM" they are saying "You can't have a credit card because you do not meet our criteria of £500 per month income".

I understand what indirect sexism is.

It is perfectly lawful (and probably sensible) for the bank to refuse credit cards to people with incomes under £500 per month.

It's fair enough that you don't think it is a feminist issue Catgirl. But I think that the vast majority of self identified feminists would disagree with you. (Only saying self-identified because I am not sure how else you can define a feminist without getting terribly academic!).

It may be that they are saying 'you don't meet the income criteria' (although Celine has commented on the practical aspects of that above). But not meeting those criteria through economic dependence on a partner is, by the overwhelming majority, something that happens to women and not men. It's a feminist issue.

So an unemployed person on income support is a better bet than a SAHM with a joint account and child benefit in her own name? That doesn't sound right.

If bank rules mean that effectively no SAHP can have a credit card, and the vast majority of SAHP are women, then of course it's a feminist issue. That's not to say the banks are necessarily wrong and should be sending out CCs willy-nilly, but it's still a feminist issue.

If you are not finacially dependent you can't then say a bank not treating you as being finacially dependent is a feminist issue

I wouldn't disagree that the fact finacial dependence on a partner is something that overwhelmingly happens to women and is therefore itself a feminist issue, but a bank not giving someone who is financially dependent is not a feminist isue, it is a consequence of being financially dependent which is a feminist issue.

But it's a consequence of an issue, not an issue in itself.

If that makes any sense at all.

And I say that as a self-identified feminist.

As Celine has said they do give SAHPs/homemakers credit cards.

But they also treat someone with a job that pays 50K as a different credit risk than someone who is married to someone with a job that pays 50K, but who isn't in a position to earn that money themselves.

As catgirl said, it is a feminist issue that women are overwhelming more likely to be in a position of financial dependency, not that banks take financial dependence into account on an individual basis.

Thanks for all the expert advice. I guess this is a mistake.

Catgirl1976, I don't get why you find it so difficult to understand why this would be a feminist issue, were it in fact an issue.

The majority of SAHPs are women. DH and I have arranged our finances such that HE acknowledges my role in the family as equal to his, so I receive the same amount of money as he does. By opening a joint account we have legally agreed to keep our finances jointly so, in fact, I do have access to £500 per month income. If the bank regularly turns down credit card applications from people in this situation then it is discrimination, because people like us do have the required income although we haven't technically 'earned' it ourselves. As people like us are overwhelmingly more likely to be women, that makes it a feminist issue. The issue is not that more women choose to make the perfectly valid decision to take care of their children full-time than men, but that the role is not recognised financially or socially as an important one (and perhaps THIS is why more men don't choose to do it).

Anyway seems this may all be beside the point - thank you Celine and others.

Hope you get it sorted. Come back and tell us what happens