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“Do you have a husband, ma’am?” asks the bank manager like someone asking the time. The second I say no, the employee starts an argument that not only annoys me but leaves me stunned. I am in a bank in Mexico City in 2016 asking for a mortgage loan. The manager explains to me – without pausing – that my marital status is crucial because if I were married I would have the opportunity to change the way the bank perceives me. Words more, words less: The institution would consider me more trustworthy and could lend me more money to buy an apartment if I was married to a man.
At first I attributed the anecdote to a macho bank clerk. I left and never returned to this bank. A few clicks showed me that this is a problem that the Mexican banking system is stuck with to this day. Women have a harder time getting a property on their own. In Mexico, only 38% of all mortgage loans were taken out by women in 2019 and 2020, according to data from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV). The most obvious reason is that we are not as integrated into the labor market as men are, and the gender pay gap also affects our creditworthiness.
The bank manager was not wrong, and perhaps his only mistake was not explaining to me that companies in Mexico consider the adjustment factor for women’s default probability when assessing a woman’s creditworthiness. That means they use a formula – different for men and women – to calculate the probability that we will become insolvent. In 2021, the CNBV turned the situation around: it issued a resolution reducing the gap in this calculation by 5%. “The evidence suggests that women have lower default rates and therefore loans to them require lower capital reserves,” the commission announced.
The document is wonderful considering that since 1971 women in Mexico have had the right to own property in the labor market like never before in history, and our capacity to consume as a demographic group has solidified. In addition to discrimination based on our gender, backwardness is deepened by a lack of knowledge of the financial tools that can take us further: financial literacy that not everyone has access to.
Women who go to a bank in Mexico to process a mortgage loan no longer have to be asked about their marital status. This episode didn’t dampen my enthusiasm, months later I went with a bank manager and a real estate consultant to find out what options I had to purchase a property on my own, and they both helped me become the happy borrower of a mortgage.
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Our recommendations of the week:
The text bans voluntary abortion in almost all of its tenets and encourages individuals to denounce those who practice it.
The federal agency is the eighth to allow voluntary abortion in Mexico.
The criminal was hit by two assassins aboard a motorcycle while driving in San Pedro Cholula in Puebla.
The Petro Vice Presidential candidate is aware of her territory, that she is a woman and that her presence makes visible those who have always been invisible.
“Neither does she recognize herself as a slave nor does she recognize herself as a slave owner,” says the labor inspector who rescued the 85-year-old domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro. Its case reflects the legacy of three centuries of African buying and selling.
The Guatemalan was accused of kidnapping and arrested in Tamaulipas in 2014. Tortured and unable to speak Spanish, she signed some papers for which she has been in prison for seven years. The President of Mexico and the UN are calling for his release.
Colombian Sebastián Villa has been charged with rape since Thursday, with the support of the leadership.
Contrary to what happens in women, medical research to find male contraceptive methods moves slowly and reluctantly.
Her name is Cecilia and she left home fleeing an abusive father and her mother’s indifference. The Shadow of the Cockroach, the book he incorporated his experiences into, is now arriving in Spain.
A few suggestions:
➡️ A woman to imitate: Katrine Marçal. From Almudena Barragán.
To continue with the economy and finance line, I recommend you follow the work of the Swedish business journalist Katrin Marcal, author of Who Cooked Adam Smith Dinner? In this book, now several years old, Marçal reviews economic history with a feminist approach. The author emphasizes the importance that women’s care and invisible work have had for the progress of societies for centuries. “By excluding women, we distort the economy in a way that makes it very difficult to address the real problems we have as a society,” the journalist emphasizes in her numerous articles. It has been translated into more than 20 languages, was named one of The Guardian’s 2015 books of the year and won the Lagercrantzen Prize in Sweden. Marçal has just presented a new book, Mother of Invention. How good ideas are ignored in an economy built for men. Here’s one of her TEDx talks on economics and feminism.
📚 A book: Daughters of the Resistance. By Carlos Salinas Maldonado.
The “ghetto girls” who opposed Hitler.
If Nazism unleashed the worst horrors we have seen in the last century, its trail of violence also produced tales of heroism, resilience, and solidarity. Famous are the case of the Nazi businessman Oskar Schindler and his plan to save more than 1,000 Jews or the carpenter Georg Elser who tried to kill Hitler with a bomb. But little is known about the strength of the women who resisted the Nazi mania. And her brave story saves Judy Batalion in Hijas de la Resistencia (Seix Barral), a monumental work that’s a publishing phenomenon. In her book, Batalion brings forth from the darkness a group of brave Jewish women who fought the Nazis, formed resistance cells, founded schools to protect Jewish children, transported secret correspondence, seduced Gestapo officers, and even fought the powerful Nazi army. These are the “Ghetto Girls” whose story will no doubt not only leave you breathless and moved to tears, but will captivate you to the last page.
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