Long overlooked in histories of finance, women played an essential role in areas such as banking and the stock market during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet their presence sparked ongoing controversy. Hetty Green’s golden touch brought her millions, but she outraged critics with her rejection of domesticity. Progressives like Victoria Woodhull, meanwhile, saw financial acumen as more important for women than the vote. George Robb’s pioneering study explores the financial methods, accomplishments, and careers of three generations of women. Plumbing sources from stock brokers’ ledgers to media coverage, Robb reveals the many ways women invested their capital while exploring their differing sources of information, approaches to finance, interactions with markets, and levels of expertise. He also rediscovers the forgotten women bankers, brokers, and speculators who blazed new trails--and sparked public outcries over women’s unsuitability for the predatory rough-and-tumble of market capitalism. Entertaining and vivid with details, Ladies of the Ticker sheds light on the trailblazers who transformed Wall Street into a place for women’s work.
Joan Marie Johnson examines an understudied dimension of women's history in the United States: how a group of affluent white women from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries advanced the status of all women through acts of philanthropy. This cadre of activists included Phoebe Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst; Grace Dodge, granddaughter of Wall Street "Merchant Prince" William Earle Dodge; and Ava Belmont, who married into the Vanderbilt family fortune. Motivated by their own experiences with sexism, and focusing on women's need for economic independence, these benefactors sought to expand women's access to higher education, promote suffrage, and champion reproductive rights, as well as to provide assistance to working-class women. In a time when women still wielded limited political power, philanthropy was perhaps the most potent tool they had. But even as these wealthy women exercised considerable influence, their activism had significant limits. As Johnson argues, restrictions tied to their giving engendered resentment and jeopardized efforts to establish coalitions across racial and class lines. As the struggle for full economic and political power and self-determination for women continues today, this history reveals how generous women helped shape the movement. And Johnson shows us that tensions over wealth and power that persist in the modern movement have deep historical roots.
Already role models for thousands of investors, the Beardstown Ladies--16 savvy women from rural Beardstown, Illinois--have beaten the stock market for more than a decade. This guide includes step-by-step instructions for their investment strategies, plus illustrative anecdotes that will show even the most inexperienced investor how to devise a personal financial plan. Photos.
Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain: Cultures of Investment defines the cultures that emerged in response to the democratization of the stock market in nineteenth-century Britain when investing provided access to financial independence for women. Victorian novels represent those economic networks in realistic detail and are preoccupied with the intertwined economic and affective lives of characters. Analyzing evidence about the lives of real investors together with fictional examples, including case studies of four authors who were also investors, Nancy Henry argues that investing was not just something women did in Victorian Britain; it was a distinctly modern way of thinking about independence, risk, global communities and the future in general.
Presents the story of three extraordinary women determined to claim their fortunes and independence by setting up their own stock exchange, a move that leaves its mark on the wild, final days of the Gold Rush era. Reprint.
When Karin Housley asked the financial expert who was handling the family investments to explain his strategy to her, he said, "You just wouldn't understand." Grrrr, she thought, and with that an investor was born. But Karin didn't want to head into the stock market's uncharted fiscal wilderness alone. She called ten friends -- ten women ranging in age from twenty-nine to sixty scattered across the United States, all concerned about their financial futures -- and urged them to start an investment club with her. They called themselves the Chicks Laying Nest Eggs Investment Club, held their meetings in an online chat room, and used the Internet to research, buy, and sell their stock choices. After two years in action, the Chicks are beating the pants off Wall Street's wise men. Their philosophy: Girls just wanna have fun, but Chicks want to learn something -- and make a few bucks -- along the way. Chicks Laying Nest Eggs is all about doing it all! And they've been spreading the gospel on their investment club website -- www.chickslayingnesteggs.com -- showing Chicks everywhere how and why to invest. Okay, okay. The Chicks know what you're thinking: "Yeah, right. An investment book that I can understand. Like that can happen." Never fear! The Chicks didn't know a stock from a stocking when they started their club, but that didn't stop them from learning (fast) or beating the market (big!) right out of the coop. And they didn't know a thing about computers, either. Here in Chicks Laying Nest Eggs, founding Chick Karin Housley starts right at the beginning and recaps everything the Chicks learned on the way to becoming Dow Jones divas. * What this thing called the market is andhow it works; * How to start your own investment club, buy stock in some good companies, and build your own Chick-worthy returns; * All the essentials (and none of the double-talk) about the S&P, NASDAQ, market cap, mutual funds, bears, bulls, and all that other stuff that you always thought you'd never understand; * How to get a computer and get your club online so you can meet anytime, from anywhere -- without crashing your too-busy schedule, or even getting out of your pajamas; * And, most of all, how to have a blast while getting your money to work harder for you than it ever has before. Chicks Laying Nest Eggs is the simplest step-by-step guide to investing in the stock market ever put together. It is for every woman, because the time has passed (if it ever really existed) when any woman could afford to be ignorant about her finances.
Excellent Women is probably the most famous of Barbara Pym's novels. The acclaim a few years ago for this early comic novel, which was hailed by Lord David Cecil as one of 'the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years,' helped launch the rediscovery of the author's entire work. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a spinster in the England of the 1950s, one of those 'excellent women' who tend to get involved in other people's lives - such as those of her new neighbor, Rockingham, and the vicar next door. This is Barbara Pym's world at its funniest.
America's Girl is an intimate look at the life and trials of Gertrude Ederle, who in 1926 not only became the first woman to swim across the English Channel, but broke the record set by men. The feat so thrilled America that it welcomed her home with a ticker tape parade that drew two million people. This fascinating portrait follows Ederle from her early days as a competitive swimmer through her gold medal triumph at the 1924 Olympics, to the first attempt the next year by Ederle to swim from France to England in frigid and turbulent waters, a feat that had been conquered by only five men up to that time. This is also a stirring look at the go-go era of the 1920s, when the country was about to recognize that women not only could vote, but compete on an international scale as athletes. At the height of Prohibition, Ederle's triumph over the formidable Channel was a triumph for women everywhere. America's Girl immerses readers in a pivotal era of American history and brings to life the spirit of that time.
This book analyses relationships between writing and the financial structures of the 19th century. What emerges is a remarkable set of imaginative connections between literature and Victorian finance, including women and the culture of investment, the profits of a media age, and the uncomfortable relationship between literary and financial capital.
