“You can’t.”
Is that like a red flag to a bull, or what? For someone to tell you that you can’t, when you know fully well that you can, is a guaranteed challenge, a sure sign that you’re going to march right up and do that thing. As in the new book, “She-Wolves” by Paulina Bren, you know they’re wrong.
Four million shares of trading. That, says Paulina Bren, was a “good day on the floor” of the New York Stock Exchange in 1960, although “by 1967 it would be closer to 10 million.” Each of those stocks was traded then by white men actively resisting women’s presence on the floor.
Women, says Bren, “were not welcome on Wall Street,” but Alice Jarcho “just needed to pay her rent,” and so she applied for a receptionist job at a small brokerage firm. Later, after doing the same job many traders were doing, she asked to take the licensing exam to be able to trade, but the firm denied her request.
Applying at a firm was just one way to land a job on Wall Street if you were a woman in the 1960s. Going to business school – if you could get in – was another way, although the eight women of Harvard Business School’s 1963 class struggled to get a foothold in trading after they graduated. Most firms assumed that the women would work a short amount of time, then get married, get pregnant, and resign from their jobs. Black women had it doubly hard.
Though by the early 1970s, feminism had taken hold in America, and organizations began to fight for women’s rights, the women of Wall Street endured groping, name-calling, and other sexual harassment on the job. They were denied promotions as lesser-qualified men rose in the ranks. They were paid less than their male colleagues, sometimes less than half.
As business history books go, “She-Wolves” is a bit of a challenge to read. There are a lot of names to follow and the timeline feels scattered, together which can be hard to follow. Author Paulina Bren has a big story to tell; sometimes, it feels like too big a story.
The best way to tackle this book, then, is to lean into the chaos. Bren’s account and the anecdotes she shares amount to a larger tale of steadfastness and bravery among a number of glass ceiling busters – surprisingly, both men and women – and if you take each individually, you’ll eventually get a sense of the bigger picture. As in nearly every industry that ever was, men tried to keep women out. This book reveals one of them.
Avid stock traders and market watchers owe it to themselves to know the women’s history behind their obsession and the bravery of its pioneers. If you think you’ll enjoy reading “She-Wolves,” you can.
“She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street” by Paulina Bren
c.2024, W.W. Norton $29.99 384 pages
