How Wall Street’s glass ceiling was finally shattered by pioneering NYC ‘She-Wolves’

In the Swinging Sixties, one of the most popular commodities on male-dominated Wall Street was Ms. Francine Gottfried’s torpedo-like breasts.

Worn proudly under a tight sweater, Ms. Gottfried had her size 43s innocently on view every workday when the 20-year-old arrived from her home in Brooklyn, to her lowly data processing job on The Street.

And daily, a macho crowd of clerks and traders gathered — some even climbing lampposts and trees — to get a better view of the 5-foot-4 young lady dubbed “the Sweater Girl” as she emerged from the subway in what became known as “The Great Wall Street Titty Riot,” circa 1968.

It’s just one of the many cases of unapologetic sexism that once dominated Wall Street at a time when “No Ladies” signs were posted on the doors of nearby luncheon clubs, and inside the hallowed halls of brokerage houses and investment banks, according to historian Paulina Bren’s fascinating, richly engaging exposé, “ She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street, ” (W.W. Norton), which covers the period from the 1960s to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The female pioneers of Wall Street, its original She-Wolves, pushed into uncharted territory not knowing what awaited them there other than men, lots of men, few of whom were going to roll out a welcome mat,” writes Bren.

When Harvard Business School opened its classes to women in the fall of 1963, graduates from elite business schools became among the earliest waves of women to arrive on the Street seeking big-money trading jobs in what was a bad-boy culture.

The truth behind the future of AI that no one wants to tell you— explained!

According to the author, they quickly learned that an equal degree did not mean equal opportunities.

A few women were allowed in research jobs that took place behind the scenes, observes Bren, but they were locked out of the lucrative sales and trading jobs that were reserved for men.

And when a woman was lucky to have broken through, she faced cruel treatment and staggering sexual harassment.

It was at small brokerage houses that “the women who dared enter this male bastion, this old-boys’ club, could find a foothold, however precarious,” writes Bren.

When Alice Jarcho started out as a clerk on Wall Street for Hirsch & Company in 1965, a male colleague exposed himself to her, writes Bren.

And when Jarcho became the first woman to trade on the floor, dildoes instead of stock orders were sent through pneumatic tubes to her.

A sympathetic co-worker tried to explain the culture to her, stating, “Our fathers were here. Our grandfathers were here. We’ve never dealt with a woman.” Jarcho, writes the author, “was disrupting almost two hundred years of sedimented testosterone culture.”

How Andrew Breitbart and ‘Weinergate’ changed American media

Jarcho left Wall Street in 1993, knowing “she had sold her soul. She had become that person who tolerates the intolerable for a buck,” writes Bren.

Muriel “Mickie” Siebert had been an anomaly when she arrived in New York from Ohio in 1954 and was hired in the research department of Bache & Co.

She would go on to become the first woman member of the New York Stock Exchange in 1967.

She called her membership badge “the most expensive piece of jewelry going” — costing her $445,000 plus the $7,515 initiation fee.

For black women, even with a Harvard M.B.A., Wall Street careers were even rarer.

But the times were changing on the heels of the civil rights movement and the exploding women’s movement.

Betty Friedan, who founded the National Organization of Women (NOW) and authored “The Feminine Mystique,” declared to a crowd of ten thousand gathered near the Financial District in August 1970, “the women’s movement is going to be the biggest movement for social and political change in the nineteen-seventies.”

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR MORNING REPORT NEWSLETTER

Paper flyers derided Wall Street as “the most visible symbol of de facto sex discrimination,” writes Bren.

In silent protest, women of Wall Street took to wearing pantsuits, abandoning the standard workday dress fashion.

In 1970, the “First National Ogle-In,” was held, when the tables were turned and men were catcalled, wolf whistled, body parts appraised, air-kissed and even some grabbed.

In that same year, Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser was a hit on public television, introducing TV viewers to women in finance like Siebert.

The Go-Go Eighties arrived in shimmering excess, along with the arrival of a Bull Market. Greed and debt had suddenly become fashionable and finance had become glamorous, observes Bren.

With the Clintons in power in the ‘90s, the economy boomed, the federal budget was balanced, and everyone from school kids to retirees appeared to be day trading on their home computers.

Billed as the “Money Honey,” pretty Maria Bartiromo, in 1993, became one of the most watched and respected female Wall Street reporters and business TV stars, operating from the trading floor.

When the planes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people, electronic trading on the floor of the NYSE had already “shifted from trading desks to investment banking hedge funds and private equity firms,” writes Bren.

Still, today, only one in 10 of those who now sit on the investment committees where private equity investment decisions are made are women. “Wall Street was built for men,” laments Bren, “and fundamentally, it remains an old boys’ club.”

For the latest in lifestyle, top headlines, breaking news and more, visit nypost.com/lifestyle/