March 2023
Financial Planning

March is Women’s History Month

By: Myra Alport

This month we’re acknowledging the important contributions of 6 female trailblazers to the world of finance.

Muriel Siebert (1928-2013) is known as the “First Woman in Finance.” After nine rejections, she was finally permitted to join the New York Stock Exchange in 1967, the first woman among 1,365 male members. That same year she founded Muriel Siebert & Co, a brokerage firm that operates today as Siebert Financial Corp. Muriel was the first woman to have a room named after her at the NY Stock Exchange.

In 1977, she became the first woman to serve as the superintendent of banking for New York State. Among her other accomplishments were pioneering the discount brokerage field and creating financial literacy programs for women.

Photo: Muriel “Mickie” Siebert in 1990, Harry Hamburg – New Yield Daily News / Getty Images

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) and Tennessee Claflin (1844-1923) were sisters from an impoverished family in Ohio who challenged the norms of Victorian society by launching the first female-owned brokerage on Wall Street in 1870. The firm, known as Woodhull, Claflin and Co, was silently backed by the one and only Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The sisters were well-known non-conformists, leading the way in the women’s suffrage movement. Victoria became the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1872 as the Equal Rights candidate. This was nearly 50 years before women were granted the right to vote! Controversy seemed to follow them throughout their lives.

Photo: New York Woman for President, billgreerbooks.com

Hetty Green (1934-1916) was labeled “the wealthiest woman in the world” during the Gilded Age (1865-1898). From a young age, her wealthy father and grandfather required Hetty to read them the financial pages because of their poor eyesight. Raised as a strict Quaker, she was taught to live with austerity. When she married her wealthy Vermont husband Edward H Green, she saw to it legally that their financial property be separate, a precursor to a modern-day prenuptial agreement. Because he was wildly speculative, she bailed him out of debt many times over. She also bailed out New York City following the 1907 Bankers’ Panic when the bank refused to do so.

Between 1865 and 1916, she turned her 1865 inheritance of $5-10 million into a fortune equivalent to $2.5 billion in today’s dollars. Also noteworthy - Hetty was one of the pioneers of value investing; she did not believe in the buy-and-hold approach.

Photo: Hetty Green, Allthatisinteresting.com

Maggie Lena Walker (1864-1934), the daughter of an enslaved couple in Richmond, VA, became the first female-chartered bank owner in the U.S. in 1903. She established the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank to help combat oppressive conditions of racial segregation while encouraging economic independence in the African American community. The institution grew significantly by 1924 and, after merging with two other banks, survived the Great Depression.

Photo: Maggie Lena Walker, from the Scurlock Studio Records in our Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Isabel Benham (1909-2013) graduated in 1931 with a degree in economics from Bryn Mawr College, one of the first 5 women to graduate with this degree. She got her big break working on Wall Street for RW Pressprich & Co, where she researched and reported extensively on America’s railroad industry. Her contributions were so impressive that she earned the nickname “Madam Railroad.” She went on to become the firm’s first female partner and eventually earned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

Photo: Isabel Benham, The Street

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