What comes to mind when you hear the word “lonely?” A lighthouse keeper, perhaps? A sheep herder in New South Wales?
How about a woman on Wall Street?
Victoria Woodhull
From its inception in the early 19th Century, the New York Stock Exchange was exclusively the domain of men, dressed in top hats and swallow tail coats. The next 50 years brought all sorts of “firsts” to the exchange: the first telegraph enabling long distance trades from outside New York City; the first transatlantic cable linking London and New York; the first stock ticker allowing investors anywhere to get current prices; and the first sale of a seat on the exchange.
But not until 1870 did the exchange see its first women stockbrokers, Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) and her sister, Tennessee. In an era where women could not go into a restaurant unescorted, Victoria was determined to shatter a few ceilings. Using the money she made from her brokerage, she founded an iconoclastic newspaper which advocated for free love, sex education, and short skirts. She also ran for President, but was unable to vote for herself due to her gender.
Hetty Green
Her outspoken views prompted Woodhull’s opponents to call her a witch, an epithet she shared with her contemporary Hetty Green (1834-1916). As a young child, Hetty read the financial news to her nearly-blind grandfather, and kept the books for her father’s whaling business. She was, in essence, one of the first value investors, buying into real estate, railroads, and bonds in the midst of market panics. Though she enjoyed making money, she did not enjoy spending it and earned the dubious distinction of being listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as “The World’s Greatest Miser.” She died the richest woman of her era with a fortune rivaling those of John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
During the 20th Century, Wall Street women were still few and far between, but the terms used to describe them were slightly kinder. Isabel Benham (b. 1909) dubbed “Mother Superior” was one of the first women to make partner at a major Wall Street firm.
Isabel Benham
Against her college dean’s advice, she did not take typing, but instead studied economics, but not before convincing her college to introduce econ courses into the curriculum. Isabel became an astute analyst of railroad companies, but always submitted her research reports signed only with an “I,” fearing that if she penned her full name, her analyses would not be taken seriously by her male colleagues.
Fortunately, another financial pioneer came along who was not at all shy about her name: Muriel Siebert, born in 1932, was the first woman to buy a seat on the NY stock exchange, and to found a national brokerage firm known as Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc. Her ascendance to Wall Street was not without struggle and ridicule. She approached ten male colleagues for endorsements, and was turned down by nine. She also got the run-around from the NYSE and from the banks: the Exchange insisted that she get $300K in loans to apply for a seat, and the banks would not lend her the money until her application was accepted by the Exchange. She prevailed and is now known as “The First Woman of Finance.”
Muriel Siebert
Directions for Women wishes to recognize these four intrepid women as part of Women’s History Month. Without their example and determination, Wall Street might still be a “boys only” club.
To this day, investment banking and management continues to be sparsely populated by women, unlike law and medicine where gender parity is becoming a reality. During the recent recession, more Wall Street women than men were laid off, a disparity made more significant by the fact that the economy-wide unemployment rate for women is about 2 percent lower than for that for men.
Women need mentors and examples like Victoria, Hetty, Isabel, and Muriel, to encourage them into professions and terrains where the red carpet is not exactly rolled out before them. They also need each other – their communities and networks – to help assuage the loneliness that inevitably comes with leadership and risk-taking.
