Description

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The propulsive story of the women who sought, and gained, a piece of the action on Wall Street.

First came the secretaries from Brooklyn and Queens—the “smart cookies” who learned on the job despite the obstacles. Then came the first Harvard Business School grads, who, despite their hard-earned diplomas, often settled for less. Eventually came the yuppies of the 1980s in power suits and commuter sneakers. In She-Wolves, award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of the first generations of women who fought their way into the bad-boy culture and lavish opulence of the finance world. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she-wolves did so with tough-as-nails persistence. Starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of Wall Street’s clubs and unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm at top firms, Bren chronicles the remarkable women who demanded a seat at the table. She-Wolves is an engaging and enraging look at the collision of women, finance, and New York from the go-go years to ground zero.

About the Author

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Paulina Bren is an award-winning historian and professor at Vassar College, where she teaches international, gender, and media studies. She is the author of The Barbizon and lives in New York City.

Praise For…

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Superb. In She-Wolves, Paulina Bren proves herself to be a master storyteller as she describes, with vibrant prose and exquisite historical detail, the women who, beginning in the 1960s, dared to enter the male preserve of Wall Street where outrageously boorish and misogynistic behavior weren’t the exceptions; they were the norm. Illuminating, exasperating, at times hilarious, She-Wolves is a must read for anyone hoping to understand where women in the United States have been and how much further they have to go.

— Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women