Two generations ago, employers used to ask aspiring young women employees why they should train them for advancement when it was likely that they’d only get married and quit. The employees were often too concerned about losing their jobs to reply, in essence: “If I can’t advance, I will have to get married and quit.”

Back then, credit rules for mortgages were coming online that required a wife’s income to be counted in a couple’s application for a mortgage. Prime interest rates were skyrocketing toward the double digits and the economy was so unstable that lenders were understandably jittery, and first-time buyers had hardly any leverage. Borrowers had to show extensive evidence of ability to repay, including information about where they got the money for their down payment (was it a gift or was it their own savings?). The intent of counting women’s income was to recognize their viable contribution to household income – their income wasn’t casual, it was causal; a driving force.

The unintended consequence of counting women’s income as material was that it drove up the bar for everyone, making it that much more difficult for borrowers to qualify for a mortgage on the basis of a single income.

Whether they jumped into the labor market or were pushed, women have become a causal agent in driving up GDP. Women’s participation pushed the GDP 11 points higher in 2012 than it would have been without them, according to a report from the Center for American Progress. Between 1979 and 2007, women’s outside-the-home annual work hours nearly doubled, from 925 hours to 1,820 hours in 2007, before declining slightly after the financial crisis.

From 1979 to 2007, the female workforce went up from about 29 percent in 1979 to 43.6 percent; again, dipping during the recession, but even then women were 12 percentage points more likely to work full-time all year in 2012 than they were in 1979.

Here we are, 40 years on, and we’re doing déjà vu all over again, partly due to concern on the part of lending institutions about the evidently conflicting requirements of the Fair Housing Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s stipulations on Ability to Repay. Lenders aren’t supposed to ask about an applicant’s family status in regards to having children, but when borrowers sit across the table from lenders, they often volunteer that information anyway.

Some lenders have apparently improperly considered pregnancy or maternity in loan decisions, because of the Dodd-Frank Act’s rules holding them responsible for assessing borrowers’ ability to repay. Today there are disturbing echoes of assumptions that women of childbearing age will either return to work at reduced pay, or leave the workforce altogether, after the mortgage papers have been signed.

As Bonnie Sinnock, capital markets editor for national Mortgage News, expressed in a recent posting, “One of the most motivated mortgage borrowers you’ll ever see is an expectant mom, because she needs the space for a new baby. Make her wait for a loan because of a pregnancy or maternity leave, and you are likely to miss the window in which she was most likely to buy.”