| Women of Wall Street |
| Written by Dja Horry | |||
|
posted by Dja Horry Women of Wall Street June 9, 2009 - January 16, 2010 Admission: $8; Students/seniors $5; Museum members and kids 6 and under FREE Museum of American Finance 48 Wall Street 212-908-4110 moaf.org  Abigail Adams case  Isabel Benham case “Women of Wall Street” will be presented in two segments – one historical, the other contemporary. The historical component will feature five women: Abigail Adams, a successful bond speculator; Victoria Woodhull, who opened the first female-owned brokerage on Wall Street in 1870; Hetty Green, Wall Street’s first female tycoon; Isabel Benham, an accomplished railroad bond analyst who began her career on Wall Street in 1931; and Muriel Siebert, the first woman to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The exhibit will use graphics, artifacts and narrative texts to describe the impact each woman had in the world of finance, and highlight the personal characteristics that enabled each woman to succeed in a time when finance was almost exclusively dominated by men. The second section will be devoted to contemporary women who have reached positions of influence in the financial industry. It will be presented as an interactive installation where visitors can hear these women speak about their experiences and offer their perspectives on being women in finance.
--------
Historical “Women of Wall Street” 
Abigail Adams, “Stock-Jobber”Born in 1744, Abigail Smith married John Adams in 1764. Since John was often away on state business, Abigail was left alone to manage the farm and handle the family’s affairs. Despite instructions from her husband to invest in land, Abigail realized she could earn a higher rate of return on their money by investing in US government bonds. Although all of Abigail’s property legally belonged to John under New England’s coverture laws, she set aside “pin money” to buy the bonds, often through an uncle who acted as a trustee for her. Abigail’s “stock-jobbing” activities were among the few sources of contention between husband and wife. Eventually, however, she managed to convince him that the investments would benefit the family, and went on to earn profits that far exceeded those they would have made had John been making all of their financial decisions. 
Victoria Woodhull, “Spiritualist, Suffragette, Broker”Born into poverty in 1838, Victoria Woodhull went on to open the first female-owned brokerage on Wall Street, fight for women’s rights, start a newspaper, and run for President of the United States. After moving to New York in 1868, Woodhull became Cornelius Vanderbilt’s clairvoyant, helping him pick stocks using her abilities as a spiritualist. Learning from this experience, she formed a brokerage company at which she earned over $700,000 (or over $12 million in today’s terms). An outspoken social reformer, Woodhull became the first woman in the US to run for President in 1872, with famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass as her running mate. In that same year, however, after exposing an affair between a well-known minister and one of his congregants in the newspaper that she founded with her sister, Woodhull was arrested for sending “obscene materials” through the mail, a federal offense. After a protracted legal struggle which drained her mentally and financially, she left for England in 1876, where she married her third husband and lived out the remainder of her life quietly. 
Hetty Green, “Tycoon”Hetty Howland Robinson Green was born in 1834 to a wealthy family. As a child, she read the financial pages to her father, and by the time she was 14, she stated that she knew “as much about finance as any man.” Unlike many women in her day, she managed her own money, and turned her comfortable inheritance into a fortune. Green was famous for her business acumen, her tireless work ethic, and her miserliness—in fact, she was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World’s Greatest Miser.” As one obituary for Green noted, however, many of her personality traits would have been considered unremarkable if they had been found in a man. Green’s winning business strategy was straightforward: invest conservatively, have enough cash reserved to ride out any market turmoil, and only loan money, never borrow. Green had two children. She trained her son, Ned, to take over the family’s business affairs, while keeping her daughter, Sylvia, nearby in order to fend off potential suitors whom she feared were only after her money. 
Isabel Benham, “Madam Railroad”When Isabel Benham attended Bryn Mawr, a women’s college, in the late 1920s, economics courses were not offered at all. In fact, upon hearing of Benham’s desire to study economics and work on Wall Street, a dean of the college advised her to enroll in typing school. Benham, however, insisted that the school offer economics, and she became one of only five women in her class to graduate with a degree in that field in 1931. With the Great Depression and her gender working against her, Benham persisted in her efforts to work on Wall Street, initially supporting herself by selling magazine subscriptions. She eventually landed a job with RW Pressprich as a bond statistician. Working for years for a boss whom she said “made life difficult,” Benham went on to become one of the most distinguished railroad analysts on Wall Street and the first woman to be named partner at a Wall Street bond house. 
Muriel Siebert, “First Woman of Finance”In 1967, Muriel “Mickie” Siebert became the first woman to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The lone woman among 1,365 men, Siebert had struggled to purchase the seat, having been turned down by nine prospective sponsors before finding the required two sponsors to endorse her application. In 1975, Siebert & Co. became the nation’s first discount brokerage. In 1977, Siebert became the first female Superintendant of Banks for New York State, overseeing all of the New York banks, which had assets of approximately $500 billion. Not a single bank failed during her tenure. Siebert remains president of Siebert & Co., frequently providing analysis and commenting on Wall Street to the media. She is also heavily involved in philanthropic work, particularly projects that advocate on behalf of women and minorities in the financial industry, as well as those that teach financial literacy.
|