Visible Women: Locating Women in Financial Failure, Bankruptcy Law and Bankruptcy Reform

Abstract

The secondary status assigned to women is the result of a culturally imposed system of meanings supporting a particular division of power and labor. Dividing the sexes and assigning distinct roles and statuses provides the basis of the social order. These structures of meaning are so deeply ingrained that they are barely recognized for the violence they impose on the financial experiences of single women.The impact of the economic inferiority and the principle of exclusion is invisible financial suffering. The applications of bankruptcy law and processes appear to be gender neutral. They appear to be rational and fair. However, their impact is uneven and skewed to a particular perception of a woman’s economic status. BAPCPA’s emphasis on women as support creditors tied to the absent and irresponsible male breadwinner, reinforces the dominant gendered economic roles. It obscures the fact that the majority of single bankruptcy petition filers in the United States are women.