05/27/2026
The New York Stock Exchange invented a rule that had never existed in its 175-year history. They created it specifically to stop her.
By December 1965, Muriel Siebert had been working on Wall Street for eleven years. She was phenomenal at her job—so good, in fact, that she was bringing in massive profits for her firm. But she had just discovered something that made her sick: men doing her exact job were making twice her salary, sometimes even more.
A friend offered a simple solution: "Buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Work for yourself."
She thought he was joking. He wasn't.
The $65-a-Week Gamble
Eleven years earlier, in November 1954, a 22-year-old woman drove into Manhattan in a used Studebaker with just $500 in her pocket. Her father had fallen ill back in Cleveland, and the family couldn't afford both his medical bills and her college tuition. She had left Western Reserve University two years in, without a degree.
Now, she needed work fast. Merrill Lynch rejected her immediately; no degree meant no chance. So, when Bache & Company asked if she had graduated, she lied and said yes, figuring she would somehow finish her remaining credits later. They hired her for $65 a week.
The senior analysts routinely dumped their worst assignments on the new kid: airlines, movies, and entertainment. These were the industries nobody wanted because they weren't making real money yet. Muriel studied them anyway. She learned everything she could and saw something the others completely missed: commercial jets were coming, and aviation was about to explode. She told her clients to buy Boeing.
She was right.
Within a few years, those "garbage" industries became her specialty, giving her an expertise nobody else on Wall Street possessed. But expertise didn't equal respect, and the pay gap continued to haunt her.
She changed firms three times—not for better opportunities, but because at each stop she discovered the same frustrating truth: men with her exact experience, results, and client list were making far more money. At one point, she sent her resume out under her full name: Muriel Siebert. She didn't get a single response. Weeks later, the New York Society of Security Analysts sent the exact same resume out using only her initials: M.F. Siebert. Her phone rang immediately.
Same qualifications, same experience, but a different name. That was the moment she knew the system would never fix itself.
Kicking Open the Door
Buying a seat on the NYSE wasn't just bold—it was completely unthinkable. The Exchange had been founded in 1792, and in 175 years, not a single woman had ever been a member. There wasn't an official rule against it; women simply didn't ask.
Muriel asked.
To apply, she needed a sponsor—someone already on the Exchange to vouch for her. She approached a colleague she had worked with for years. He said no. She asked another. No. Then another, and another, and another. Nine men refused her. The tenth finally agreed.
But the NYSE wasn't done trying to block her. They informed her that the seat would cost $445,000. Fine—seats were expensive, and she knew that. But then they hit her with a brand-new condition: she needed a bank to guarantee $300,000 of the cost with a letter of credit. No man in Exchange history had ever faced such a requirement.
So she went to the banks. The banks told her they wouldn't issue the letter unless the NYSE approved her first. The NYSE countered that they wouldn't approve her without the bank letter. It was a perfect, custom-built trap.
She fought that trap for two years. She called every contact, leveraged every relationship, and flatly refused to quit. Finally, Chase Manhattan broke ranks, and David Rockefeller himself approved the loan.
On December 28, 1967, Muriel Siebert walked onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. She was handed badge number 2646—a white metal badge with red numbers, designed with a clip meant for a man's suit pocket. When she took it to a jeweler to have it adjusted for women's clothing, they quoted her $11.50. She used a safety pin instead. The badge had cost her $445,000; fixing the clip wasn't worth twelve bucks.
The floor had 1,366 members that day: 1,365 men, and Muriel. For the next ten years, those numbers wouldn't change.
The Price of Freedom
She founded her own firm, Muriel Siebert & Company, in 1969, building her business the only way she knew how—by being better than everyone else. Still, the indignities came daily.
Once, she arrived at the Union League Club for a board lunch meeting. They refused to let her ride the elevator with the men, forcing her to walk through the kitchen and climb the back stairs with the waiters. Her male colleagues saw how furious she was. When lunch ended, they tried to ride the elevator down with her in solidarity, but the club stopped them. So, every single man walked down those back stairs and through the kitchen by her side.
The restroom situation on Wall Street was even worse. The seventh floor of the NYSE housed the members' luncheon club, where all the real deals went down. There was no women's restroom there, nor anywhere nearby. Women had to go all the way downstairs. For twenty years after Muriel joined, nothing changed. Finally, in 1987, she'd had enough. She told the Exchange chairman to install a bathroom on the seventh floor by the end of the year, or she would have a portable toilet delivered right to the trading floor. They built the bathroom.
In 1977, New York Governor Hugh Carey appointed her the state's Superintendent of Banking—the first woman to hold the post. She oversaw $500 billion in assets during some of the most turbulent years in American financial history. Interest rates skyrocketed and banks across the country failed, but not a single New York bank went under on her watch. She reorganized troubled institutions, forced strategic mergers, and convinced the federal government to advance millions to make those mergers work.
And that bank that had refused to write her the loan letter back in 1967? "I regulated the bank that wouldn't write the letter," she later noted with pride.
Muriel never married and never had children. Her constant companion was a long-haired Chihuahua named Monster Girl—followed eventually by Monster Girl 2. A tiny creature, she liked to say, that couldn't be cowed by the big dogs.
When friends asked about her choices, she recalled that she had almost married once, back in Cleveland, but her life took a different path. "Money represents power to men," she told The New York Times. "But to me, it represents freedom."
Freedom to walk through the front door instead of the kitchen. Freedom to use the bathroom on her own floor. Freedom to be judged by her work instead of her name.
The Lasting Legacy
She spent her fortune opening doors for others. She created the Siebert Entrepreneurial Philanthropic Plan, sharing half of her profits from securities underwriting with charities. She developed financial literacy programs for New York City high schools, teaching young people—especially young women—the language of money. She also donated millions to help other women get their start in finance.
In 1992, at an event honoring her work, she left the room with a warning:
"Firms are doing what they have to do legally. But women are coming onto Wall Street in large numbers—and they still are not making partner. They're not getting into positions that lead to the executive suites. There's still an old-boy network. You just have to keep fighting."
She never stopped fighting. On August 24, 2013, Muriel Siebert died of cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan at the age of 84. Throughout her career, she had shaved four years off her age, so most people thought she was 80. Even in death, she kept a few secrets.
In 2016, the New York Stock Exchange dedicated Siebert Hall in her honor. It was the first time in the Exchange's 224-year history that a room was named after an individual. The dedication ceremony displayed her old coat from the 1970s, her trading badge, and photos from her decades on the floor. The ceiling featured ribbons painted in three shades of blue, inspired by scrolling ticker tape.
Someone once asked her how she accomplished it all. "When I see a challenge," she said, "I put my head down and charge."
She arrived in New York with $500 and a used car, and she left Wall Street completely transformed. Not because the system welcomed her, but because she refused to wait for an invitation. Every door she walked through, she kicked open first—and then she held it wide open for everyone behind her.
