ABSTRACT
Advocates for women’s rights fought for measures that would end credit discrimination on the basis of gender. Conservative women’s groups opposed the imaginary of obtrusive bureaucratic interference with the operation of free market credit institutions. The record of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and women’s banks in failing to eliminate some of the most annoying aspects of neoliberal deference to the data collecting and interpreting practices of the US banking system suggests that a different argumentative strategy might have made a difference. Scholars in communication and the humanities more generally have thoroughly documented how feminist activists and critics have created and deployed arguments that challenge the legitimacy of the private-public dichotomy. The process of congressional passage illustrates how neoliberal governance reaches consensus when qualitative grievance narratives clash with the quantitative presumptions in favor of private corporate activities.
