How Women Moved Up on Wall Street Despite Pranks, Sexism and Worse

Not only was it challenging for women to become brokers or traders, but they were also victims of demeaning — even violent — treatment from the men: lewd remarks, sexual pranks, groping, even rape.

“There was a certain willful invisibility that the men were practicing,” Bren says.

In “She-Wolves,” which Kirkus Review named “one of the 10 best books of 2024,” Bren focuses on women’s movement into financial services from the 1960s to 2001.

In the interview, Bren discusses how Muriel Siebert jumped through hoops to become the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the lamentable experiences of the first female trader on the NYSE floor.

She was routinely the recipient of obnoxious tokens of the male traders’ disdain; for example, tampons covered with ketchup. The only way to cope was to laugh, the women told Bren. But the second wave of women arriving on Wall Street saw no humor.

Instead, in several instances, they filed class action lawsuits against their firms.

The most infamous involved Smith Barney’s “Boom Boom Room” in Garden City, New York, serving up lap dances and liquor for the men. The branch manager set the tone, using vulgar sexual slurs to refer to the women working under his supervision.

Here are excerpts from our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: Why was Wall Street so unwelcoming to women in the 1950s, 60s and 70s?

PAULINA BREN: Women were seen only as potential investors in the stock market, not as potential brokers [for example].

Some of it was downright brutal hostility; some of it, just ignorance.

Firms said there were no qualified women to hire. That wasn’t true. There was a certain willful invisibility that the men were practicing.

Most professional worlds were built by men for men, and even more so on Wall Street.

THINKADVISOR: What motivated women to work there in the early days?

BREN: [Most of them] were just looking for clerical positions that paid a little bit more, and Wall Street is where they ended up.

They tended to be a scrappy bunch, often lower-middle class or working class, who, maybe, went to college but often dropped out. Nothing was handed to them. They had thick skin.

THINKADVISOR: How did some of them manage to move up the career ladder?

BREN: It was very hard for women to become brokers. Many were barred from taking the Series 7 exam.

The major Wall Street firms weren’t letting women anywhere near [real] money-making or powerful positions.

But women got a foothold at the dozens and dozens of small Wall Street brokerage firms and started to move away from the secretarial-clerical pool. Many [transitioned] to research departments.

You could write your research report on whatever field you’d choose and sign it with your initials.

As a result, women were advising their firms, but often no one knew that the people who wrote the reports were women.

THINKADVISOR: How did the pioneering Muriel “Mickie” Siebert get ahead?

BREN: She started on Wall Street in the 1950s and became a research analyst specializing in aviation. Going from one brokerage firm to another, she made good money.

But she would see their hiring a guy who was fairly inexperienced and paying him as much as she was making, if not more. That was her frustration.

THINKADVISOR: How did she eventually overcome that challenge?

BREN: A friend suggested that she buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and open her own firm. Mickie thought women weren’t permitted to have a seat.

But that night she read the New York Stock Exchange’s constitution, and there was nothing about women not being allowed to buy a seat.

So when one opened up, for $445,000, she decided to go for it. It was hard for her to get a [required] sponsor and a loan. She had to overcome many hurdles, but she became the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

THINKADVISOR: The women who worked on Wall Street in the 50s, 60s and 70s were victims of deep sexism, not just derisive remarks or pranks but physical abuse, such as inappropriate touching. If reported, the men paid the firm money for their transgressions, but they didn’t lose their jobs. Secretary Patricia Chadwick went for a drink with a broker at her firm, Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. And based on the description in your book, he raped her. Is that so?

BREN: Yes.

THINKADVISOR: Did she report him?

BREN: No. Patricia [who later became a portfolio manager] was very [naïve] and innocent. She didn’t understand that what happened to her was rape and didn’t say anything about it to anyone at the firm.

THINKADVISOR: The first woman to trade on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was Alice Jarcho. The men gave her a very rough time. Please discuss.

BREN: She knew [the treatment] was going to be bad, but she didn’t know how bad.

Whenever she left her booth [on the trading floor], she always found something gross and disgusting left for her when she returned [delivered through a pneumatic tube used for tickets], [such as tampons covered with ketchup, condoms filled with mayonnaise].

But she couldn’t have a fit about it because the whole point of the men leaving something was that they were watching for her reaction. They’d watch the women to see their reaction to a prank, a remark, a touch.

THINKADVISOR: How did they typically react?

BREN: You had to react with a certain sense of humor. That became your weapon.

If you were a woman who wanted to stay on Wall Street, you simply had to deal with [the sexism].

THINKADVISOR: What added insult to injury?

BREN: The men grabbing you was annoying, but what was really annoying was when the male traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange refused to do trades with the women.

They would send their clerks to communicate with them because they wouldn’t stoop to speak to the women.

This was a culture that promoted sexism and patriarchy more so than others.

THINKADVISOR: It was obviously tough to get a promotion. How did women manage to move up?

BREN: On the one hand, women would be promoted because they were aggressive, but on the other, you couldn’t be seen as being too aggressive and not womanly enough.

THINKADVISOR: By the early 1980s, “Wall Street was exploding [and] women were arriving … in droves. The firms needed people to fill the seats,” you write. How were these women different from the first wave?

BREN: The second wave had Ivy League degrees, business school MBAs — very different backgrounds. They had credentials.

THINKADVISOR: Were the first-gen women eager to help them?

BREN: There was a tremendous amount of conflict.

The second-wave women [in 80s and 90s] felt that the women who came earlier acted too much like men. The first wave felt the women new to Wall Street didn’t appreciate what they had to go through that allowed the [second wave] to get access.

THINKADVISOR: Maureen Sherry, who at 28 became a managing director at Bear Stearns, had been subjected to sexual harassment from the get-go. On her first day on Wall Street, when she opened a box of pizza, she found unwrapped condoms in place of pepperoni slices.  And when she returned to the office from maternity leave and rose from her desk, breast pump in hand, to go to the nurse’s office, the traders made mooing sounds. One even drank milk that she put in the communal fridge. But she put up with all this in the spirit of being “good sport.” Didn’t she?

BREN: Years later, Maureen was interviewing a young woman out of business school, offering her a great job at a really high salary. The woman asked, “Can you tell me straight, how it is for women here?”

Maureen told her about the pizza and started to laugh, but this young woman didn’t. She looked [“horrified,” Bren writes].

Maureen realized in that moment that things had shifted and she had “internalized that [abuse] making it seem OK.”

THINKADVISOR: It certainly hasn’t been easy for women to find career fulfillment on Wall Street. Even now, only about 30% of financial advisors are female. What do you make of that?

BREN: I don’t want to sound like a complete pessimist. A lot of the women in finance say working on Wall Street has been an incredible opportunity.

The environment is different now. But to say that it has vastly improved depends where you are and what department you’re in.

We haven’t come to a point where the stories and environment that I describe about the second half of the 20th century have disappeared.

In fact, a lot of women [I interviewed] said they could relate to [the earliest gen’s experience] of “I’m the only woman in the room.”

Photo credit: Adam Patane