If you are referring to the U.S., this is absolutely, 100%, straight-up false. In fact, U.S. courts upheld a merchant's right to pursue credit default restitution against women who were delinquent. (More on that in a second) In his book, 'Land of Desire,' historian William Leach talks about the proliferation of American consumer culture in the late-19th and early-20th century. He talks about how American department stores took a page out of Paris' book around the turn of the 19th/20th century, and began to deliberately manage the aesthetics of merchandising. There was a commercial revolution during this time that turned selling goods and merchandise into a near art-form. Advertising, fashion, credit lines, product displays: all of it came to be managed in a deliberate way to entice consumption of non-essential items (or up-sell people on items that were indeed necessary, like clothes). The way products were displayed, the manner in which a department store was decorated and lit, the advertising campaigns were all revolutionized in this era.

Part of this was the notion of giving strangers credit (previously this was done on a local level where a person's reputation played a big role in whether or not they would be given a line). Merchants like Woolworth's or Wanamaker's were keen to open up a second stream of family consumerism by enticing women into their stores, and encouraging them to buy via lines of credit. There was actually a court case in the early 20th century that saw a man sue a department store (Wanamaker's) for giving his wife a line of credit, as he argued that as a woman, she did not have the fiscal or moral authority to make such a decision without a husband's approval. The court sided with Wanamaker's, and ruled that a woman had every right to run up credit debt, and the issue was settled there. For more on this, check out Leach's book (pg. 129 specifically).