No woman had been a member of the New York Stock Exchange since its founding in 1792. But as of today, December 28, 1967, when the bell rang to start the trading, there were now 1365 men and one woman…Muriel “Mickie” Siebert.

Being a member of the NYSE meant that Mickie had a seat on the trading floor and all the privileges of buying and selling the stock of the companies listed there. Although only members could make transactions, they could do so for themselves or as a broker for someone else.

With her membership, Mickie was finally her own boss, which had had been her motivation to get her own NYSE seat. She had spent years trying to find a position where she would be paid the same as her male colleagues. She worked at four different trading firms and at each one quickly proved she was just as valuable as the her male colleagues. It didn’t matter – no matter where she was, her bosses were unwilling to commit to equal pay. She finally had to concede that the only way to guarantee a fair salary was to buy a seat on the NYSE and work for herself.

There was just one issue – there were no women members of the NYSE. It simply wasn’t done. Women weren’t even allowed to step onto the floor until 1943, when they were needed to fill in as clerks and pages supporting the traders after the men who had filled those jobs went overseas to fight in World War II. Mickie had always assumed there were no women trading was because it was restricted to men only. Once she started researching how to secure a seat on the floor, she realized there were no rules or regulations that prohibited women. It was just custom and tradition that it was a men only space.

Even though its rules didn’t prohibit Mickie from buying a seat, the NYSE didn’t make it easy for her. First she had to find a current member to sponsor her. She made a list of colleagues and contacts to ask. The first nine men she asked said no because they didn’t want a woman trader on the floor.

And then after Mickie found her sponsor, NYSE named the price for the seat – $445,000 (the equivalent of $3.8 million today). They also put a new condition in the sale just for Mickie – that $300,000 of it had to be financed by a bank. It was the first time the NYSE required a prospective member to secure a loan to prove her creditworthiness. It took another two years until she could find a bank willing to loan a woman that much money – most of them told her they wouldn’t loan her the money until she owned the seat. She finally overcame this Catch-22 and convinced the bankers at Chase Manhattan to give her a chance.

Now, finally, Mickie was on the floor, trading stocks, in charge of her own destiny. Well, except for one strange but major issue – there was no bathroom for Mickie to use on the trading floor!  A bathroom break in the middle of a trading session could prove expensive if traders missed a market opportunity while they were gone. They needed to be in and out of the bathroom quickly. There had never been a need for a women’s room on the trading floor, and Mickie’s request for one was initially ignored. But that quick access was necessary for her to succeed, so she kept asking. The NYSE finally built a single bathroom stall on the floor for Mickie, which prompted her observation that “not since I was a baby had so many people been so interested in my bathroom habits.”

Mickie didn’t let any of these small indignities stop her. Now that she had her NYSE membership, she knew it was just a matter of time before she opened the doors to her own brokerage firm. And in 1969, she did just that with Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc.

The Power of the Wand

Mickie was the only woman member of the NYSE for her first 10 years and became known as “The First Woman of Finance.” The NYSE became a public company in 2006. Its members no longer own their own seats, but instead own shares.

Mickie didn’t want women to face the same barriers to a career in finance that she did. Once she succeeded, she spent considerable time and money reaching a hand out to pull other women into the field. She was a willing investor in women owned businesses and gave many grants and loans as well.

One organization that is helping girls follow the trail blazed by Mickie is Rock the Street, Wall Street. Its mission is to provide a “financial and investment literacy program designed to spark the interest of a diverse population of high school girls into careers in finance” It offers various classroom projects, mentors, internships, and field trips to girls around the country.

Her Yellow Brick Road

The New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1792. A group of 24 brokers and merchants met under a tree on what is now called Wall Street. They set up a marketplace with formal rules for trading shares of companies. They also developed strict standards for the companies who were invited to sell shares. The members controlled the ownership, represented by each of them having a “seat” on the floor for trading. As the economy grew, more seats were gradually added, until the NYSE capped the number of seats at 1366 in 1953.

Just a year later, in 1954, Mickie Siebert decided to make good on her goal of working on Wall Street, still the center of the financial world. She drove east to New York in her old Studebaker sedan with her $500 savings in her purse. Mickie had done enough research to know that while the financial firms employed women, it was almost always as secretaries or receptionists. If they were on the trading floor, it was as a clerk or page – only supporting roles. Anything that required analysis was considered a man’s job.

Even so, Mickie applied for a position as a researcher at a firm called Bache & Co. She truthfully told them that she had attended college, but left out the detail that she didn’t have a degree. They didn’t ask if she had actually graduated and she didn’t offer that specific detail. Once hired, she set out to make sure there would never be a need to review her credentials. She worked hard and smart for her $65/week. Mickie quickly identified some accounts and industries that the old guard was ignoring. The biggest area of growth that she could see was in aviation – commercial air travel was still a small percentage of how people traveled, but Mickie had a hunch that would change. She was right!

Once she got to know her fellow researchers, she discovered that they (all men) were making more money than she was for the same job. So she took her skills and growing reputation as someone who could predict industry growth and moved to another firm. She did that twice more, and even changed her name on her resume to M.F. Siebert to not be immediately labeled because of her gender. But she couldn’t find a company willing to pay her the same salary as a man.

Mickie felt like she was at a crossroads. She either had to accept her role as a lower paid researcher or figure out a new path. One of the friends she had made through work was a famous investor named Gerald Tsai. Mickie asked him where she should work to get paid as much as a man. He told her that the best way to control her own fate was to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

Brains, Heart & Courage 

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Just the Facts

• Muriel Faye Siebert was born on September 12, 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family nicknamed her Mickie.
• Mickie had to fight for access to many men’s only spaces, including Manhattan’s men’s only lunch clubs, where many business deals were done. She also fought for 20 years to geta women’s bathroom on the 7^th floor of the NYSE, near the member’s lunch club. It only happened after Mickie told the NYSE Chairman she was going to bring in a port-a-potty if he didn’t install one!
• Mickie converted Muriel Siebert & Co. from a brokerage into a discount brokerage on the first day the NYSE allowed its board members to negotiate commissions in1975.
• Mickie was appointed New York’s first female superintendent of banking by then Governor Hugh L. Carey in 1977. She was the first woman to hold the position and was very successful. No banks had to close under her watch. As part of her duties, Mickie directed New York City’s Municipal Credit Union, Urban Development Corporation, and Job Development Authority.
• Mickie made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1982.
• Mickie started the Siebert Entrepreneurial Philanthropic Plan in 1990. Its purpose was to help people decide how and when to make charitable donations.
• Mickie was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994.
• Mickie wrote an autobiography in 2002, called Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick.
• Mickie never graduated from college but received 17 honorary doctorate degrees.
• Mickie never married. Her pet Chihuahuas, Monster Girl and then Monster Girl 2, were her constant companions. They even traveled with her!  She left $100,000 in her will to Monster Girl 2.
• Mickie died from cancer on August 24, 2013. She was 84 (although many of her friends thought she was 80). The NYSE honored her memory by naming a room after her – Siebert Hall – the first room there named after a person.

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