Final answer:
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act is designed to prevent discrimination in credit decisions, making it illegal to consider personal attributes like gender, race, and ethnicity; it changed discriminatory lending practices, ensuring equal treatment for all consumers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) is a federal law that aims to prevent discrimination in the extension of credit by making it illegal for creditors to consider personal characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, or age (under certain circumstances) when determining a person's eligibility for credit. This law was a response to historically biased practices that disadvantaged certain groups, particularly women. For example, prior to the ECOA, lenders commonly refused to grant loans to married women without their husband's involvement and often discounted or ignored a woman's income when considering a family's credit application—practices that effectively marginalized women in financial decision-making.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act also came into play in prohibiting discrimination in employment based on race, gender, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation, further illustrating the societal push towards equality in various facets of public life. The passage of the ECOA in 1974 ended the unequal treatment by lenders that had been commonplace, promoting a fairer financial landscape for all consumers regardless of their sex or marital status.The Equal Credit Opportunity Act is a federal law designed to prevent discrimination in extending credit. It prohibits lenders from using factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, and age (under certain circumstances) to make credit decisions. The law was enacted to put an end to practices such as refusing loans to married women independently of their husbands or considering only the husband's income when extending credit to a family.