Give Her Credit: A Look at the Women Who Changed Banking

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), introduced in 1973 and passed into law in 1974, prohibited discrimination in lending based on sex and marital status. The law was later expanded to cover all protected classes. In practical terms, this meant that banks, credit unions, and other lending institutions could no longer require a woman to have a male co-signer – usually a father or husband – when applying for such basic credit tools as mortgages, loans, or credit cards (a woman could, finally, get a credit card with her name – and her name only – on it).

So why was it that in 1978, an unmarried Denver woman was denied a $20,000 business loan? To add insult to injury, she was also subject to the indignity of hearing male bankers tell her, “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” and “Go home and have children.”  

In Give Her Credit: The Untold Account of a Women’s Bank That Empowered a Generation  (published in January, 2025), journalist Grace Williams explores not only the why, but how a group of Denver-area women banded together to launch the First National Women’s Bank in 1978. While not actually the first female-founded bank in the United States, the Denver-based bank was the first with a federal charter, and it became the most successful.

The story plays out against the social tumult of the 1970s, which saw women seeking recognition and expanded opportunity professionally and personally. Williams places the story of the First National Women’s Bank in the context of a time when women, dissatisfied with being largely relegated to “traditional” careers such as nursing, teaching, and secretarial work, were not just wanting more but fighting for it.

She brings to life the early meetings in suburban homes and follows the story through disagreements over the bank’s purpose, bureaucratic roadblocks, the challenge of raising startup capital, and finally the bank’s triumphant grand opening in Denver’s Equitable Building. Also brought to life, through in-depth interviews, careful research, and passionate writing, are the tenacious women responsible for the bank’s founding and success. While they were a disparate group – ranging from housewives to local business women, to an East Coast heiress who inherited a busted bank during the Great Depression – they shared the belief that women deserved financial equality. Give them credit, and, indeed, the book does.