Whatever laws are unfair and oppressive to women have just happened--just grown up like weeds out of neglected soil.
Let me illustrate.

No lawmaker in New Mexico ever introduced a bill into the legislature making men liable for their wives' torts or petty misdemeanors.

Yet in New Mexico, at this very minute, a wife is so completely her husband's property that he is responsible for her behavior.

If she should rob her neighbor's clothesline, or wreck a chicken yard, her unfortunate husband would have to stand trial.

Simply because in New Mexico married women are still living under laws that were evolved in another civilization, long before New Mexico was dreamed of as a State.
Nowhere else in the United States are women allowed to shelter their weak moral natures behind the stern morality of their husbands, but in more than one State the husband's responsibility for his wife's acts is assumed.