Editing Women's rights (section)

=== Property rights ===

During the 19th century some women, such as [[Ernestine Rose]], [[Paulina Wright Davis]], [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]], [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]], in the United States and Britain began to challenge laws that denied them the [[Women's property rights|right to their property]] once they married. Under the common law doctrine of ''[[coverture]]'' husbands gained control of their wives' real estate and wages. Beginning in the 1840s, state legislatures in the United States<ref>{{cite web |url=http://womenshistory.about.com/od/marriedwomensproperty/a/property_1848ny.htm |title=Married Women's Property Act &#124; New York State |publisher=Womenshistory.about.com |access-date=30 August 2011 |archive-date=23 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161223184115/http://womenshistory.about.com/od/marriedwomensproperty/a/property_1848ny.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> and the British Parliament<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/geweb/PROPERTY.htm |title=Property Rights of Women |publisher=Umd.umich.edu |access-date=30 August 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120805171942/http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/geweb/PROPERTY.htm |archive-date=5 August 2012}}</ref> began passing statutes that protected women's property from their husbands and their husbands' creditors. These laws were known as the [[Married Women's Property Acts in the United States|Married Women's Property Acts]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/366305/Married-Womens-Property-Acts |title=Married Women's Property Acts (United States [1839&#93;)&nbsp;– Britannica Online Encyclopedia |encyclopedia=Britannica.com |access-date=30 August 2011}}</ref> Courts in the 19th-century United States also continued to require privy examinations of married women who sold their property. A [[privy examination]] was a practice in which a married woman who wished to sell her property had to be separately examined by a judge or justice of the peace outside of the presence of her husband and asked if her husband was pressuring her into signing the document.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Braukman |first1=Stacy Lorraine |last2=Ross |first2=Michael A. (Michael Anthony) |title=Married Women's Property and Male Coercion: United States Courts and the Privy Examination, 1864–1887 |journal=Journal of Women's History |date=2000 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=57–80 |id={{Project MUSE|17300}} |doi=10.1353/jowh.2000.0035 |s2cid=144788908 }}</ref> Property rights for women continued to be restricted in many European countries until legal reforms of the 1960-70s. For example, in [[West Germany]], the law pertaining to rural farm succession favored male heirs until 1963.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/law/help/inheritance-laws/germany.php|title=Germany: Inheritance Laws in the 19th and 20th Centuries|last=Palmer|first=Edith|date=2015-09-06|website=loc.gov|access-date=2019-06-17}}</ref> In the US, [[Head and master]] laws, which gave sole control of marital property to the husband, were common until a few decades ago. The Supreme Court, in ''[[Kirchberg v. Feenstra]]'' (1981), declared such laws unconstitutional.