Carrie Bradshaw and friends would shudder at some of the revelations in a new book by one of Lancaster University’s historians.
Sexism in the City, authored by Professor of Modern British History James Taylor, is the first book to trace the history of women stockbrokers in the UK from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries.
Forgotten pioneers, these businesswomen fought against the odds to establish successful brokerages across the country and in the process, challenged society's beliefs about women and money.
A far cry from the popular American comedy-drama television series Sex and the City, the book tells the story of how the nation's stock exchanges denied these women membership for generations, mobilizing increasingly desperate arguments to try to justify their exclusion, until women finally won the right to join the London Stock Exchange in 1973.
Though historians have recently reassessed women's roles in the development of capitalism, highlighting their involvement as investors and entrepreneurs, they have assumed that because women were not members of stock exchanges, they were not active as financial intermediaries until modern times.
By spotlighting the lives and careers of women who worked as stockbrokers outside male-monopolized institutions, the book reframes the historical development of finance in several ways.
It highlights the extent to which the seemingly gender-neutral institutions and practices of finance were, in fact, based on gendered ideologies and exclusions.
It argues that focusing on institutions only reveals part of the financial ecosystem, meaning that we miss what was happening outside the formal market.
And it challenges London-centric interpretations of financial history, asking questions about the financial cultures existing outside the metropolis.
“If we look beyond the official exchanges—and beyond London—a more diverse financial environment comes into view,” says Professor Taylor.
“Women have been working in finance for much longer than we think. In many cases, they built successful careers, and some even became minor celebrities in their day.”
The history uncovered in Sexism in the City also helps to address problems with financial culture in the twenty-first century.
Current reform initiatives are unlikely to succeed unless they acknowledge that for hundreds of years, professional identities and institutional structures in finance have been based on the denigration and marginalization of women.
Acknowledging the efforts of those female stockbrokers who challenged misogynistic beliefs and defied men's monopoly of high finance by forging their own careers is the first step towards imagining a different kind of market, adds Professor Taylor.
The book launches on 27 March and is available here.