I received a kind note from Ryan Noonan of creditcards.com reminding me of the problems that women face when establishing and maintaining good credit. He pointed to an article on their website that gives a comprehensive summary of the problems and solutions for those problems.
One of the systemic problems mentioned in that article is that women have a harder time getting a mortgage loan because their credit scores tend to be lower. Why are their scores lower? It all starts with income inequality; women still earn eighty cents for each dollar a man earns. Because their incomes are lower, the credit limits on their credit cards are lower, and they tend to leave a balance on their cards each month.
The creditcards.com article lists several steps that women can take to improve their credit scores, so I won’t repeat them here. I hope my readers will read the article and share it with their women friends.
Check out the graphs in this article by the Woodstock Institute that break down the mortgage application results, year-by-year, for different sexes and ethnicities. It would be nice if we could wave our magic wands and create an even playing field where women and ethnic minorities would get their fair share of mortgages, but the real answer is to correct the underlying problem–to change our culture so that we see women as having an intrinsic value, one that is equal to men.
Thanks for reading,
Ron
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