In 1938, Mary G. Roebling made national news when she became the first female president of a major national bank—the Trenton Trust Company. From that position, she immediately began promoting women’s economic empowerment. “Women’s social emancipation started,” Roebling declared, with “the typewriter.”Footnote 1 Roebling’s stock speech—given to audiences ranging from school secretaries to the Soroptimist service club—observed that “[f]or many years …. [t]he social decree was that woman should remain in the kitchen and attend to its chores and propagate our nation.” Connecting industrialization to new opportunities for women, Roebling hailed the typewriter for allowing “woman to express herself in a business nature” and for supporting “economic independence.”Footnote 2 Although the New York Times panned the speech, it would—more than fifty years later—publish an obituary acclaiming Roebling as “a tireless advocate of a greater role for women in the country’s economic affairs.”Footnote 3 Throughout her career, Roebling toured the nation delivering speeches to women’s groups, business organizations, and civic associations. She argued that companies should treat female employees equally by granting women the influence that accorded with their abilities, significant property and securities holdings, and control over the household dollar.
This article examines Mary Roebling’s career and biography to better understand her role in promoting women’s collective uplift through the economic realm. I label her beliefs “capitalist feminist” because of her focus on women’s empowerment through the capitalist system and because of the accommodationist tactics she used to forward that message. Her principal goal was for women to compete—free from discrimination—directly against men for jobs, professional standing, and remuneration, believing that if women proved they were “equal to men when the question of ability in business is concerned”Footnote 4 and established “the influence economic power gives them,”Footnote 5 then they would also—ultimately—overturn inequitable gendered relations across society, from the home to the halls of government. Roebling publicized her philosophy in a manner designed to fit the dominant culture—by presenting a traditionally “feminine” image and by embedding her message within moderate political positions and capitalist arguments, tying women’s economic progress to a “free enterprise” ideology that emphasized individually earned, meritorious achievement.
This essay argues that other women held similar “capitalist feminist” views. Between the early twentieth century and the 1970s, a group of mostly elite, white women—many of whom held “first woman to” titles in their career fields—pursued an economics-first strategy for women’s advancement using accommodationist methods comparable to those of Roebling.Footnote 6
This article conceives of capitalist feminism not as a wholly separate category but as a type of “business feminism.” Éva Fodor, Christy Glass, and Beáta Nagy define business feminism as “a brand of feminism that privileges women’s advancement in the corporate hierarchy and centres corporations as the ultimate purveyors of gender equity.”Footnote 7 Scholars have also defined business feminism as “the representation of women’s interests by women in corporations.”Footnote 8 While both business feminists and capital feminists embraced the capitalist structure for advancement, capitalist feminists had broader goals related to the comprehensive, collective progress of all women. The objectives of business feminists were far narrower.
Historically, many business feminists associated themselves with women’s issues for expedient or practical reasons—for the purposes of self-promotion, marketing a particular company or brand, or garnering “social responsibility” points. Business feminists have included women like Olive Ann Beech, who cofounded Beech Aircraft, and Tillie Lewis, who started Flotill Foods Corporation. As company leaders, these women rose to national prominence around the same time as Roebling. Beech and Lewis demanded respect as successful female entrepreneurs and garnered media attention for occupying unusually powerful business roles, which, according to their biographer, Edith Sparks, helped break down workplace barriers for successive generations of women.Footnote 9 While their gender attracted advantageous publicity for their careers and companies, neither Beech nor Lewis used their positions to advance women collectively. Business feminism can also be seen in women’s groups associated with specific industries. Scores of employees joined the National Association of Bank Women (NABW) to augment their resumes with additional training and education. However, as an exemplary business feminist organization, the NABW, while providing women additional employment opportunities, failed to challenge sex-based discrimination norms within the industry or to promote women collectively within the broader economy or society.Footnote 10 Today, business feminism is sometimes seen when entrepreneurs reference their gender to reach female customers, when corporations employ contemporary women’s issues to enhance their marketing, or when companies institute women’s mentoring programs to improve their public reputations.
Among business feminists, capitalist feminists were “true believers”—that is, beyond simply promoting their own careers and companies, they had a sincere desire to effect women’s collective progress. Capitalist feminists employed their wealth, available publicity, and political contacts to actively foster the cause for equality.Footnote 11 Women like Roebling leveraged their success to address the advancement of their sex, even when forwarding such ideas appeared “radical” to male colleagues and had the potential to damage their careers and professional reputations. Unlike many business feminists, Roebling and women with similar beliefs were active in the broader women’s movement—outside their fields of employment—either through women’s groups, popular commentary and messaging, or a combination of both. Moreover, for capitalist feminism, procuring economic power for women meant more than climbing the corporate hierarchy—it also meant acquiring property, securities, and access to the services necessary to establish financial autonomy. Nor was economic power an end in itself; instead, it was the primary means for also obtaining political and social power.
While claiming to advance women in an inclusive manner, capitalist feminists—like the broader category of business feminists from which they came—declined to challenge the existing economic structure or culture and, moreover, embraced accommodationist methods. To reduce resistance from male business leaders and the public, capitalist feminists dressed and spoke in traditionally feminine ways and tailored their ideas about women’s economic opportunities to fit mainstream political views. To help explain and contextualize these tactics, this article documents Roebling’s career and the extreme hostility she faced within her industry. From within such highly pressurized atmospheres, Roebling and other capitalist feminists forcefully but strategically pushed at the boundaries defining acceptable roles for women, both in business and across society. As a case study, Roebling’s career in the banking industry reveals how American business culture and the dictates of capitalist thought shaped the ideology and methods of capitalist feminism.
Paradoxically, considering the elite, white makeup of the women supporting capitalist feminist thought, they had the most in common with black women—and men—who viewed economics and employment as a fundamental medium for their collective progress. Shennette Garret-Scott narrates the life of Maggie Walker and her establishment of St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank to present a story of economic self-help in the early twentieth-century South. Kendra Boyd demonstrates how the Detroit Housewives League (DHL) pursued civil rights activism during the 1930s and 1940s by allying with the Booker T. Washington Trade Association to promote black entrepreneurship, employment, and patronage of black-owned businesses. Like the capitalist feminist tactic of making objectives socially appealing, Walker dressed in exquisitely tailored clothes, partnered with “respectable” black elites, and aligned herself with white power brokers. Similarly, DHL leaders deployed the middle-class “politics of respectability” by portraying women as “nurturing, moral, and altruistic.” They, moreover, deliberately placed the term “Housewives” in their organization’s title to make female-led activism more palatable to the surrounding community.Footnote 12
Still, the actions and objectives of Roebling and women who held capitalist feminist opinions reflected their privileged socio-economic and racial positions. While they wanted to seek economic progress for all women, their goals were frequently disconnected from those of working-class, Black, and immigrant women, whose numbers and historical time spent in the workforce well exceeded their own.Footnote 13 As they championed the capitalist meritocracy, they either opposed or largely overlooked working-class activism and labor organization as strategies for women’s economic empowerment. The actions of Roebling and women with similar beliefs illuminate the findings of Katherine Turk and Allison Elias, who argue that as government policy presented women new tools for pursuing economic betterment—for example, through Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act—it was primarily white, middle-class women who gained advancement by accessing previously male-dominated professional and managerial positions. Working-class women were left behind, either in positions historically dominated by women—such as low-paid clerical jobs—or in previously male-dominated, working-class positions without the benefit of robust safety regulations or consideration for family caretaking roles.Footnote 14
Some readers might question whether women who adapted themselves to the patriarchal capitalist system are worthy of the description “feminist.” Indeed, some of the women examined in this essay would have embraced that label while others would have rejected it, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s when it came to be associated with ideas that capitalist feminists viewed as radical. This article argues that within the more general classification of “business feminist,” capitalist feminists were the actual “feminists” because, unlike many of their fellow travelers, they believed in the cause. They demonstrated their commitment by dedicating their time and resources to seeking women’s comprehensive equality—across the market, social, and political realms—though they prioritized economic success as the key to accomplishing that agenda. By exposing the tension in women’s history and gender scholarship about just who deserves the title “feminist,” this article highlights the divide between these disciplines and business history. What within American business culture between the 1930s and 1970s was viewed as an energetic, assertive drive for women’s rights, today looks to gender scholars—on the other side of second-wave feminism—not only as accommodationist but as ineligible for the title “feminist.” Indeed, because women business leaders are viewed as transgressive for occupying positions that support capitalism, scholarship on gender in the twentieth-century workplace has tended to focus on workers.Footnote 15 By revealing these tensions, this essay invites scholars of twentieth-century women’s history to further consider the place of female entrepreneurs and business leaders.
The first section of this essay evaluates Roebling’s successful career while the second section illustrates how antagonistic the male-dominated banking sector was toward women. Showcasing Roebling’s professional environment to exhibit the type of workplace setting within which capitalist feminists labored elucidates the incubation of their accommodationist views, thereby revealing crucial connections between business culture and social history. The final section continues examining Roebling’s biography while touching on the profiles of additional capitalist feminists. It asserts that other women besides Roebling promoted their gender’s collective advancement through an economics-first strategy “marketed” in “packaging”—that is, through “feminine” personas and moderate political messaging—designed to persuade both business leaders and mass citizenry alike. In addition to examining how these women interacted with labor feminists and second-wave feminists, this section further explores what made capitalist feminists a distinctive group within business feminism.
Mary G. Roebling: Career Biography
Roebling assumed the presidency of Trenton Trust after her husband, Siegfried Roebling—grandson of Brooklyn Bridge designer John A. Roebling—died and left her a controlling position through stock ownership. When Roebling obtained its presidency, Trenton Trust was almost $4 million in debt, and observers wondered if it would join the thousands of banks that the Great Depression had already swept away.Footnote 16 Displaying political and business acumen, Roebling promptly secured a federal bailout loan, later calling Jesse Jones—the powerful head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation’s multibillion-dollar rescue fund—“one of the finest gentlemen I have ever met.”Footnote 17 Roebling then adopted cutting-edge operational and marketing methods by reorienting the bank toward retail services. Articulating a “department store” philosophy that conceived of banking in terms of “merchandising” money, Roebling promoted the bank to ordinary, small-dollar customers and specifically targeted women.Footnote 18 Confounding critics, who dismissed Roebling as “a lucky girl who inherited a bank,” the 31-year-old not only kept Trenton Trust afloat but also secured its position, by the 1940s, as an important regional bank.Footnote 19 Four years after she assumed the presidency, Trenton Trust’s board of directors appointed Roebling chairman as well. By demonstrating Roebling’s success within an industry hostile toward women, this section and the following one suggest the importance of business culture for influencing her views about women’s collective progress.
Alongside the nation’s most innovative bankers, Roebling broadened Trenton Trust’s customer base beyond traditional commercial bank clients—businesses and wealthy individuals—to average, small-dollar customers.Footnote 20 To reform bankers’ reputation as “glass-eyed individuals with ice water in their veins,” Roebling emphasized friendly customer service and promotional campaigns.Footnote 21 Describing her “gospel of public relations” to an audience of bankers, Roebling explained the importance of having “an honor to serve” attitude, regardless of the customer’s social status: “To these small, but very important depositors, the pleasant smile of the teller means much: whether native American or foreign-born, they go back to their neighborhood, telling their friends what a ‘fine gentleman’ they have up at the bank.”Footnote 22 Moreover, within the commercial banking industry, Trenton Trust joined the forerunners of consumer lending: During the 1930s, the bank provided loans for consumer durables, like appliances and automobiles.Footnote 23 Roebling also designed marketing campaigns to appeal to the average “mass” consumer. Decades before banks began welcoming new customers with a toaster, Trenton Trust gave away thousands of potted shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day. Around major holidays, Roebling hired professional window decorators and musicians for the lobby. Throughout the year, Trenton Trust hosted flower shows, art exhibitions, and special displays like rare coin collections.Footnote 24
Roebling also increased the availability of bank services and consumer credit. Spurning customary bank hours of 9 to 3, Trenton Trust accommodated work schedules by staying open until seven on most weeknights. In the 1940s, the New Jersey bank opened one of the first “auto-pedestrian” teller windows in the country. Roebling, moreover, pursued an aggressive branching strategy. Competitors scoffed when Trenton Trust opened a branch inside a local railroad station, but Roebling recognized that thousands of daily commuters were potential customers. By the mid-1950s, the bank had ten “convenient” locations throughout the city.Footnote 25 During that same decade, Trenton Trust was among the first banks in the country to offer an early version of the credit card—no mean feat since, to make the bank’s “Quick Charge” product operational, Roebling had to convince hundreds of local merchants to accept the novel, third-party financing product.Footnote 26
To blend her goals of bank profitability and female economic advancement, Roebling both promoted women and courted them as customers. Before World War II, when it was rare to find female tellers, Roebling hired mostly women for the position, reasoning that they made customers feel more at ease. She also employed women officers to run the trust and note departments.Footnote 27 Roebling made the bank’s well-appointed board room available for women’s club meetings and promoted their causes in the bank’s display windows. Believing that one way women could gain economic independence was by becoming more sophisticated financial consumers, Roebling hosted elegant teas to educate them about financial and estate management.Footnote 28
In 1958, the American Stock Exchange elected Roebling a governor, making her the first woman to serve in a policymaking capacity over a major stock exchange. Roebling also served on numerous corporate boards. She counted politicians like New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman (R) and President Richard Nixon (R) as friends, and six U.S. presidents appointed Roebling to a variety of government posts and commissions. When National State Bank of Elizabeth, New Jersey, purchased Trenton Trust in 1972, Roebling was elected chairman of the board.
Throughout her career, Roebling capitalized on her success to press for women’s economic power. She addressed civic organizations, business groups, industry associations, and radio and magazine audiences. Roebling delivered speeches to and also belonged to myriad women’s groups, including the League of Women Voters, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Zonta International, and the National Woman’s Party, among many others. Roebling also supported all-female investment clubs. Through these outlets, the Trenton Trust president argued that women possessed economic authority as consumers, stockholders, entrepreneurs, and property owners. She contended that employers should respect these economic developments by hiring women and promoting them into high-level management and executive roles. In 1978—to help reform women’s unequal access to financial services—Roebling helped establish the Women’s Bank in Denver, Colorado.
The final section delves further into Roebling’s views and how she presented them to more fully define “capitalist feminist” principles. The following section—by evaluating the banking industry’s unfavorable attitudes toward women—contextualizes both her career and her beliefs, elucidating why Roebling believed she had to cover her economics-first ideas in accommodationist wrapping.
Threatening Banker Professional Standing and Masculinity
Despite her achievements, Roebling was unpopular among her peers—the overwhelming majority of whom were men. Though she turned around a failing bank, sat on anywhere from six to over twenty company boards at any one time, and became known as the “first lady of finance,”Footnote 29 she was—according to the Saturday Evening Post—“controversial” within the industry and therefore “‘overlooked’ for committee appointments in both the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the New Jersey Bankers Association.”Footnote 30 While it was perfectly acceptable for male banking executives to have their careers profiled in the press or to provide their thoughts on contemporary events, the publicity Roebling attracted rankled her peers. Provoking their irritation were historical professional trends: Whenever an occupation became associated with women, deprofessionalization and reduced prestige resulted. After the 1940s—owing to the industry’s rising number of female employees and the turn toward mass customer service—banking leaders grew increasingly defensive about the “masculinity” of their profession. Roebling’s national prominence only exacerbated their concerns.
Women entered banks and corporations, primarily as clerical workers, at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1940, they accounted for almost one-fifth of all commercial bank employees. A select group made themselves visible as tellers, a position that bankers promptly deprofessionalized—by decreasing its responsibilities, compensation, and prestige—once women began to dominate it during the 1950s.Footnote 31 After World War II, as check-processing needs inundated the industry, banks hired armies of additional clerical workers. Mostly hidden away in back rooms, performing the routine, menial tasks of the “clerical proletariat,” women comprised a full two-thirds of commercial bank employees by 1960.Footnote 32
Since the “feminization” of an occupation effected deprofessionalization, male bankers feared sharing a collective identity with women.Footnote 33 Like the leaders of other industries with a large proportion of female workers—i.e., retail, insurance, and telecommunications—bankers attempted to protect the “masculine” façade of their institutions by implementing dual, sex-based occupational tracks. The career and leadership track was for men. Women were consigned to the lesser track of low-paid, dead-end clerical and customer service jobs.Footnote 34 But owing to the banking sector’s hyper-fragmentation, which created thousands of small, mom-and-popish unit banks, a tiny fraction of women employees—a few percent by 1960—rose to officer positions.Footnote 35 Although these positions were usually of minor distinction and the women occupying them had far more experience than their male counterparts, the existence of hundreds of female banking officers undermined sex-based employment segregation as a means for protecting the masculine image of commercial banking. Mary Roebling’s national visibility at the head of Trenton Trust underscored this “problem.”
During the postwar period, commercial bankers increasingly oriented their operations toward retail banking. Providing financial services for the masses entailed “female” attributes, such as interpersonal skills, and “womanly” labor like routine service transactions.Footnote 36 Thus, the “masculine” reputation of commercial banking—particularly as compared to investment banking—began to wane. Investment banks required less clerical labor and thus had many fewer female workers than depository banks. After the 1930s collapse of depository banking, policymakers removed Wall Street operations from commercial bankers, banning them from the most muscular, risk-filled financial dealings. By the mid-1960s, survey respondents were identifying depository banking as “old fashioned” and “feminine” while classifying investment banking as “dynamic” and “masculine.”Footnote 37
Like most male professionals during this period, banking leaders viewed their business as far too important for women’s participation in decision-making capacities. To businessmen’s run-of-the-mill chauvinism, bankers added supplementary indictments: At least since the eighteenth century, women had been labeled as particularly incompetent in financial matters—either because they lacked sufficient risk tolerance or the intelligence to understand its complexities.Footnote 38 When banks hired more women during World War II, Forbes alleged that “girls” were creating “problems” by making mistakes. “That’s because boys, by their very nature,” explained the article, “have a somewhat clearer idea than girls of finance.”Footnote 39 Examining bank employment practices during the 1960s, sociologist Jane Prather wrote that “it was assumed that…women’s minds were incapable of and unaccustomed to what was referred to as ‘doing figuring’ and making financial transactions.”Footnote 40
To distance their professional identities from women, bankers regularly portrayed them as inferior employees, incapable of understanding financial affairs. At midcentury, almost every issue of the ABA trade journal, Banking, contained at least one cartoon promoting profligate spending, ignorance about finance, and general obliviousness as distinctly “feminine” characteristics.Footnote 41 Whether depicting women as potential employees or customers, the message was clear—women were not to be taken seriously in the world of banking. One cartoon showed a woman interviewing for a bank position. After learning that the job did not require a college degree, she exclaims, “No bachelors? But your ad says plenty of opportunities!” Another illustration featured a grinning female applicant asking the personnel director what type of discount employees received on money.Footnote 42 Illustrations of women who could not grasp financial basics were common, whether female customers who didn’t understand how bank accounts functioned or women who couldn’t balance a checkbook. A 1950s vocational film for high schoolers featured a bank officer telling Jimmy how quickly he could rise through the ranks to officer status while telling Pat that after years of clerical work, she might become a teller. The film concluded with Pat remarking, “Well, if you two men will excuse me. I’ve got to shop.”Footnote 43 Banking also indicated women’s employment value by referring to them as “girls.” Meanwhile men—that is, white men since minorities almost never appeared in the journal before the late 1960s—were never referred to as “boys.” In this manner, industry leaders signaled that women were ill-suited for high-level banking jobs.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) 1965 founding obliged bankers to justify their practices, but their response was to more explicitly defend their discrimination. Women’s interpersonal skills—like “accuracy, patience, and courtesy”—made them ideal for clerical and customer service roles.Footnote 44 But, claimed banking leaders, they were unsuitable for supervisory positions.
ABA officials argued that the female temperament, familial obligations, and cultural preferences created a “shortage” of management and executive talent within the female labor pool.Footnote 45 A late-1960s survey of 102 midwestern bankers revealed a widespread belief that women lacked loyalty and discretion, the ability “to accept criticism gracefully,” and “failed miserably when it came to taking initiative.”Footnote 46 An Ohio bank officer explained that his institution preferred hiring male supervisors in order to “guard against petty female disagreements getting into management considerations.”Footnote 47 Bankers cited statistics demonstrating high turnover among female employees in their twenties to prove that women preferred to start a family—they failed to mention that these women were in monotonous clerical jobs with little chance for advancement.Footnote 48 A 1968 Banking article reported that “management has been lax in encouraging women to acquire a banking education,” because “many women do not like the inconvenience of being away from their families.”Footnote 49 Regarding women who did obtain sufficient experience and education, Banking reported “that men do not like to work for women and women do not like to work for women.”Footnote 50 One executive contended that women were unfit for managerial posts because “male employees are able to get better cooperation.”Footnote 51 Thus, by the mid-1970s, over 90 percent of female bank employees still worked in low-paying clerical jobs.Footnote 52
Blatantly sexist employment practices attracted federal and legal scrutiny. For example, a 1972 EEOC report highlighted the banking sector as particularly egregious in denying women equal opportunity for promotion.Footnote 53 In 1974, Bank of America entered a consent decree to settle two class action suits brought by women’s groups.Footnote 54 In Chicago, Women Employed (WE) brought suit against Continental Illinois, charging “systematic discrimination against women in promotion policies.” Similar class action suits were filed against First National Bank of Chicago, Harris Trust, Northern Trust, American National Bank & Trust, and Central National Bank, among many others.Footnote 55 By the end of the 1970s, bankers were being “targeted for special OFCCP [Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs] scrutiny” related to backpay liability and settlements.Footnote 56
Intense federal and legal pressure convinced banking leaders to end explicitly discriminatory policies in favor of covert ones. They, for example, inflated job titles so their employment statistics would indicate more advancement and career opportunities for women. Women were promoted to “financial managers” and other low-level managerial positions without any—or perhaps a trivial—increase in salary and responsibilities.Footnote 57
Within Roebling’s industry, the status—or lack thereof—that women obtained by 1980 demonstrates the challenging conditions she faced. Banking leaders’ persistent hostility toward women contextualizes the development of Roebling’s capitalist feminist ideology. This backdrop also reveals why her activities and messaging in the service of women’s collective progress—though done in an accommodationist manner—nevertheless appeared to those within her industry as far-reaching and transformational.
Marketing Capitalist Feminism for Mass Consumer Appeal
Suggesting important linkages between historical business and social developments, this section continues following Roebling’s biography while also surveying the profiles of other women who held accommodationist, capitalist feminist ideas within workplace settings that were either overtly antagonistic to or, at minimum, highly suspicious of ambitious women. As products of the twentieth-century business world, these women adopted pro-capitalist worldviews and, where necessary, molded themselves to better fit corporate expectations. Like Roebling, these professionally successful, white women prioritized economic advancement as a strategy for achieving women’s progress in all areas of life. Unlike some of their peers within the more general category of business feminism, capitalist feminists demonstrated a high level of commitment to the cause, devoting considerable time and energy—without any appreciable return to their careers or companies—to obtaining women’s economic power as a means for achieving complete societal equality. To help distinguish capitalist feminists, this section compares them and their organizations with individual and associational examples of business feminism.
Three characteristics—related to accommodating the contemporary societal milieu—aligned Roebling with other women holding capitalist feminist principles. First, to promote their aims, Roebling and like-minded women intentionally cultivated “feminine” personas that communicated respect for conventional family values and masculinity. Second, they viewed capitalism as giving women the best opportunity to obtain economic authority. Championing both women’s wealth accumulation and merit-based equal opportunity, they believed that positioning women in decision-making roles was the most expedient way of effecting economic parity for women on every rung of the employment ladder. Finally, Roebling and women with similar views advocated for government policies to advance women economically—but they did so from ideologically centrist positions.
Capitalist feminists believed their pragmatic methods would help them overcome animus from the business world and a skeptical public. However, as capitalist feminists vigorously pushed for women’s rights, their elite views and attempts to integrate their objectives with status quo cultural arrangements created friction with both labor feminists and second-wave feminists. This section will explore these themes as it evaluates capitalist feminist tactics across four main areas: embracing traditional femininity, seeking economic clout, stressing political moderation, and utilizing the organizational path.
Capitalist Feminist Tactics: Embracing Traditional Femininity
After assuming the presidency of Trenton Trust, Roebling immediately began stumping for women’s economic empowerment. But it took her some time to cultivate the cautious, traditional public image that she eventually adopted to articulate that message. For example, in 1938, as the nation was suffering through the Great Depression, Roebling lambasted “men of straw” who enjoyed business success only as long as they had “the momentum of favorable economic forces.”Footnote 58 She demanded companies hire more women—without “window dressing” tactics—and place them in decision-making, authoritative positions.Footnote 59 The press criticized her “uninhibited statements.”Footnote 60 During World War II, Roebling drafted a speech, titled “Women Must Fight in the War,” urging military leaders not to “overlook a Joan of Arc.” Penciled in the margin was a note from Roebling’s most trusted advisor—her father, Isaac Gindhart, Jr.: “Careful. Be careful with this. Dad.”Footnote 61 Roebling complied. She retitled the speech “Little Women, What Now?” and removed all comments related to women in combat.Footnote 62
Several factors helped convince Roebling to more carefully package her persona for the dominant culture: an increasing awareness of public perceptions, the banking sector’s resistance to female leaders, and her disputed background. Details of Roebling’s early life are difficult to unravel because she adjusted them to keep her professional image in line with American conceptions of gender, class, and “respectability.” Born Mary Gindhart, she grew up in a middle-class Collingswood, New Jersey, home. Roebling’s first husband, Arthur Herbert, died in 1924, about three years after their daughter was born. What Roebling hid from the press was that she had dropped out of high school to marry Herbert because she was pregnant. Additionally, for many years—until his obituary listed her as a survivor—Roebling covered up a second marriage to Hugh Graham. Mary told reporters that she met Sig Roebling while working for a Philadelphia brokerage and taking night courses at the Wharton School of Business. (Women were barred from daytime classes.) However, the banker inflated her brokerage title from secretary to account manager and obscured biographical details that suggest she met Roebling before divorcing her second husband.Footnote 63 Mary’s 1933 marriage into the well-known family of steel and wire manufacturers, Roebling & Sons, caused a stir among high-society Trentonians suspicious of the unknown woman who came to town with a daughter in tow. Chinwags claimed Sig Roebling was an alcoholic gambler and Mary was a ‘notoriously promiscuous…barfly’ who cleverly lured him into marriage.Footnote 64 Whether the rumors amount to malicious fabrications fueled by classism and sexism or realities that confirm Roebling’s talent for reshaping her image to acquire power—or some mixture thereof—we may never know.
What is clear is that Roebling learned to project a public image that declared fealty to traditional womanhood and family values.Footnote 65 Roebling’s personal papers reveal a striving self-promoter who astonished the Trenton Trust board by seizing the presidency after her husband died. But in public, Roebling portrayed herself as an unsuspecting widow abruptly thrust from the cocoon of female domesticity into the working world. She was a “mother of two children and a housekeeper” who “knew nothing about banking,” a 1930s newsreel sympathized.Footnote 66 Roebling told reporters that her father and father-in-law had to convince her to take over Trenton Trust. “Literally,” explained an article written for Lady’s Circle, “it was forced on her.”Footnote 67 Belying the domestic image she projected, Roebling worked 18-hour days and traveled frequently. Her wealth and parental relationships afforded her around-the-clock care for her two children—a luxury most women lacked. By the late 1950s, Roebling was identifying herself as a “banker and a grandmother.”Footnote 68 When the issue arose among second-wave feminists, she declared herself staunchly “pro-marriage.”Footnote 69 However, once she gained economic autonomy, Roebling was unwilling to remarry. “Have your own power,” she privately counseled her daughter. “Don’t give it to a man.”Footnote 70 For the public, however, Roebling deliberately feminized her image.
Like other women who appear to have held capitalist feminist beliefs, Roebling appealed to cultural concerns about familial stability by asserting that working women strengthened the household unit.Footnote 71 She contended that extra income helped families get ahead, that women were capable of managing the household and a job, and that husbands preferred a wife with “many dimensions to her life.”Footnote 72 In 1956, when Man in the Gray Flannel Suit author, Sloan Wilson, protested in a lengthy New York Times article that women belonged in the home, Bernice Fitz-Gibbon—an advertising star who founded her own agency in 1954—countered with arguments that, like Roebling’s, catered to men. Fitz-Gibbon maintained that “devoted wives and loving mothers…should have careers” not only to bring home extra income and set a positive example for the children but also to afford husbands better company and save them from feeling “henpecked” by cooped-up wives.Footnote 73
During the 1950s, Fitz-Gibbon authored the “Fitz and Starts” column for Good Housekeeping, where she regaled her female audience with advice-laden stories about how to succeed in business, provided counsel on climbing the corporate ladder, and encouraged “late-blooming” careers after raising children.Footnote 74 Through her autobiography and newspaper articles—like her 1956 New York Times essay, “Tips for Would-Be Women Bosses”—she lamented the “dire dark discrimination” of the business world and the “scandalously low” number of women on company boards.Footnote 75 However, her portrait of success was overtly traditional and “feminine”—that of women who “want to raise hordes of children, wear Dior’s new Long Look, run a charming home, put an orange glaze on a spitted Long Island duckling, besides having a career outside the home.”Footnote 76
For Roebling and like-minded women, reassuring the patriarchy also meant refusing to trespass into the realm of “masculine” behavior. Described as “disarmingly charming,” with a gentle speaking voice, Roebling advised a North Carolina women’s group to nurture their careers by following her example: “Some women force themselves to acquire male personalities; these women are disliked by men because they are a threat to them.”Footnote 77 Jo Foxworth agreed. A New York advertising executive who established her own firm in 1968, Foxworth had a prototypical capitalist feminist approach to women’s economic advancement. Her popular 1970s book, Boss Lady, reviewed the “cold business realities involved in self-packaging.”Footnote 78 Foxworth wrote that “[w]hen men come on shouting and bulldozing, they are being ‘forceful.’” But, she continued, “women who try this approach are unattractively ‘aggressive’—in a word, bitchy.”Footnote 79
Roebling also accommodated gendered social standards by attending to beauty and fashion. Her designer tastes and polished appearance—always wearing “just the right shade of lipstick”—landed Roebling on lists like the 1958 “America’s Ten Best Coiffed Women.”Footnote 80 Indeed, journalists seemed more interested in Roebling’s appearance than the historic nature of her American Stock Exchange appointment: “Mrs. Roebling wore a topaz wool suit with mink trim (by Berdorf-Goodman) and a brown and blue feather hat (by Walter Florell) all pointed up in gold,” wrote one financial reporter.Footnote 81 Muriel Siebert—who had similar economics-first beliefs as Roebling—opened her own brokerage firm and, in 1967, became the first woman to own a New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) seat. She commented that she initially paid little attention to appearance until the 1960s when her career required that she begin “dressing the part.” She then embraced feminine clothing, eschewing the “unisex ‘dress for success’ nonsense.”Footnote 82 Foxworth advised her readers to do the same. Discussing “reactionary” male bosses, she counseled women to “dress like a candidate’s wife” because “any deviation from the norm makes them nervous.”Footnote 83
Joanne Meyerowitz’s work reveals how midcentury magazines frequently carried feminized Horatio Alger stories. Presenting a variety of women—ranging from mechanics and athletes to authors and politicians—these magazines, writes Meyerowitz, had a “bifocal vision of women both as feminine and domestic and as public achievers.”Footnote 84 Capitalist feminists tapped into this zeitgeist. By emphasizing that they were “not trying to ‘copy men,’”Footnote 85 Roebling and her confederates sought to valorize female economic power while reassuring the opposite sex that women’s career success would not threaten their masculinity.
Capitalist Feminist Tactics: Seeking Economic Clout
Just as Roebling attempted to make her messaging more palatable through a “feminine” public presentation, her arguments for women’s economic power rested on assumptions about mainstream American views. After all, what could be more natural—in a country famous for big business and profit-seeking—than women seeking a piece of the proverbially apple pie? In a country where the mighty dollar ruled, how could Americans fail to grant financially powerful women full familial, social, and political parity as well? This reasoning animated Roebling’s conviction that securing women’s economic autonomy was the key to unlocking full equality. “Seventy years ago custom decreed that woman’s place was in the home—that women and children be seen and not heard,” Roebling wrote early in her career. She confidently predicted that as more women entered the business and professional world, the image of the “helpless female”—fit only for domestic duties—would fade away.Footnote 86 When responding to an interviewer’s question about why more women were working outside the home, Roebling emphasized that they “were crying out for an opportunity to show their ability to do things well.”Footnote 87 When calling for the nomination of a female vice-president during the 1950s, Roebling highlighted the resumes of women executives. “There are qualified women for this job,” she argued.Footnote 88 In these ways, Roebling connected women’s economic success to equality in all aspects of societal relations--from the home to politics.
Like Roebling, all the women examined in this essay emphasized women’s economic power to achieve political and social parity; nevertheless, the degree to which each of them believed financial authority would secure comprehensive equality is not always clear. Still, articulating sentiments similar to those of Roebling, NYSE broker Muriel Siebert claimed that “however many elections are won by females, ultimately, women will increase their political power only after they increase their economic power.”Footnote 89 Investment banker Julia Montgomery Walsh—who will be discussed further below—made a similar argument before the 1980 American Association of University Women (AAUW) convention. “There is no way we are ever going to accomplish anything unless we gain,” she contended, “economic clout.”Footnote 90
To promote women’s economic standing, Roebling gave interviews and toured the country, arguing to women’s clubs, business groups, and civic associations that capitalism rewarded competitors according to merit, regardless of sex. Roebling and women with similar views insisted that they were not requesting favors. “I am a militant leader,” stated Roebling, “in the belief that women are equal to men when the question of ability in business is concerned.”Footnote 91 Thus, all positions and promotions were to be obtained according to individual accomplishments. When asked about the large number of women her bank employed, Roebling emphasized that all hiring followed “the merit system.”Footnote 92 Roebling assured audiences that she understood business success came only through hard work, dedication, and education.Footnote 93 And while insisting that there should be more women in the highest echelons of business, Roebling repeatedly stated that executive suites and corporate boardrooms should only “be open to those who are worthy.”Footnote 94 Correspondingly, Fitz-Gibbon emphasized that her writing against sex-based discrimination did not make her “for females…any more than…for horses.” Since—by nature—“[a] miss is as good as a male,” she was simply asking for accomplishment-based equity.Footnote 95
This focus on individual achievement—combined with the purposefully “feminine” image they presented—left Roebling and capitalist feminists navigating what Nancy Cott called “the feminist legacy and feminist paradox” of trying to achieve equality while, at the same time, establishing sex-based differences.Footnote 96 It illuminates why Roebling and women with similar beliefs frequently trumpeted distinctive “feminine” features that made women employable while simultaneously scolding women to overcome supposedly “female” traits. Women’s “careful, patient and industrious” manner made them ideal workers, claimed Roebling.Footnote 97 Because they were cooperative and had “an intuition that men don’t,” they were not only suited for customer service but also for management and executive positions, she asserted.Footnote 98 “Business does need women—not as surrogate men,” argued Foxworth, but as “female people with another dimension of intellect, knowledge, and experience.”Footnote 99 Fitz-Gibbon maintained that women had superior insights into what customers wanted, counseling advertisers, “If you want more legal tender, hire more of the female gender.”Footnote 100
Meanwhile, capitalist feminists lectured women to jettison any characteristic that might be labeled a “female” deficiency. Roebling persistently pleaded with women to work hard, demonstrate initiative, and learn as much as possible about their employment field.Footnote 101 At times, Roebling complained that women were “too passive” in their careers.Footnote 102 “There is no place in business for the woman who cares not to study her job,” she warned.Footnote 103 Fitz-Gibbon advised women to overcome sex-based biases through rigorous devotion to their jobs and—since “fancy figuring” was all the rage—by acquiring a quantitative-based business education.Footnote 104 Jo Foxworth cautioned women to avoid “emotionalism,” explaining that “[m]en are more likely to get away with” what are labeled “particularly ‘female’ pitfalls.”Footnote 105
Similarly, Margaret Hickey implored women to work extra hard during World War II to protect their newfound employment status. Women, she argued, had a “special responsibility to be ready.” A lawyer and secretarial school proprietor who also expressed capitalist feminist views, Hickey focused her activism on women’s economic and employment policies, including the acquisition of high-level government jobs.Footnote 106 As chair of the Women’s Advisory Committee to the War Manpower Commission, Hickey fought sexism with capitalist reasoning, contending that women “should not be treated as usurpers of men’s jobs,” and any postwar “weeding out process” should be “done on the basis of ability rather than sex.”Footnote 107 Though largely ignored, the 1945 report that Hickey’s committee issued was ahead of its time: It condemned sex-based employment discrimination while proposing government aid to childcare as well as education and job training for women.Footnote 108
Besides arguing that capitalism rewarded merit-based achievement, Roebling contended that it also granted economic power to consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs. She frequently claimed that because women controlled 90 percent of each dollar spent and exerted “a powerful stimulus on the economy,” they deserved fuller participation in the economy as high-level managers and executives.Footnote 109 Roebling continually asserted women’s “natural ability” in business by citing their resumes as capitalists: At midcentury, women maintained almost half of all savings accounts, inherited 70 percent of estates, owned half the nation’s stocks, and operated thousands of clothing, beauty, and milliner shops.Footnote 110
Women who supported similar capitalist feminist principles as Roebling followed the same free enterprise logic. Wilma Soss, a broadcast journalist and shareholder activist, established the Federation of Women Shareholders in American Business at the end of the 1940s to lobby for influence over corporate policy. A central objective was to convince companies to acknowledge women’s standing as investors by placing them on company boards. Roebling spoke to Soss’s group in 1952: “We are attempting to bring about a woman’s representation…in companies where we are providing the equity capital while all responsibilities fall in the hands of those who do not have the equity capital, nor a woman’s viewpoint.”Footnote 111 So frequently did women advocating for their gender’s economic power make these claims that a lengthy 1956 Fortune article detailing what “a pain in the neck” women investors were, explained that “Such repeated statements as ‘women control the wealth of the country’… are misleading cliches” since men received tax breaks for listing stock portfolios under their wives’ names.Footnote 112 Such arguments for women’s economic empowerment nevertheless continued.
Barbara Hackman Franklin—a Nixon-appointed Consumer Affairs Commission member—told business leaders that because women governed 70 percent of the nation’s purchasing power, they should hire “more women who understand the emerging trends in marketing.”Footnote 113 Franklin was one of the first women to graduate from Harvard Business School. After working for Singer Corporation, she moved to First National City Bank, where she rose to assistant vice president. Franklin’s first job in the Nixon administration was as a special assistant tasked with placing women in government jobs, including high-level positions. With the help of women’s clubs, Franklin developed a talent bank—a database of accomplished professional women—to counter administration officials who maintained that qualified women simply did not exist to fill elite positions.Footnote 114
Because it aimed at mainstream ideological beliefs, capitalist feminist thought was readily customizable to address a range of national and business interests. During the 1930s, Roebling claimed that women’s workplace inclusion and the increased purchasing power it would grant them could help pull the country out of the Great Depression.Footnote 115 By the 1940s, Roebling had fully developed her Keynesian message about the advantage of working women to economic health: “Employment means income; income means ability to purchase and consume; purchase and consumption means more production,” she explained.Footnote 116 Roebling and women with similar views frequently tied women’s economic empowerment to the fight against communism. Investment activist Wilma Soss warned that if businesses kept women from high-power jobs, they would weaken “free enterprise” by inciting women to follow the “siren song in ‘Statism.’”Footnote 117 When McCarthy-era Washington was in a tizzy over “targets of Communist agents,” Margaret Hickey—who had moved on from her position at the War Manpower Commission to be the Ladies Home Journal editor—connected the ability of capitalist countries to out-produce the Soviets to women’s contributions: “No modern society can progress further or faster than the economic or social status of its women,” she reminded her D.C. audience.Footnote 118 Roebling made a similar argument for decades; for example, she contended in a 1965 Commerce article that if her readers wanted the “preservation of our free enterprise economy,” then “we cannot afford the luxury of neglecting over half the brain power of the nation.”Footnote 119
The examples above demonstrate that while capitalist feminists employed the same type of accommodationist messaging as business feminists, they evinced a level of commitment that set them apart—that is, they had a devotion to advancing women collectively that went beyond motives attached to their employment position or corporate profit-seeking. Thus, successful women who referenced their sex primarily to advance their careers or attract customers were business feminists, ineligible for the narrower label of capitalist feminist. For example, in 1952, Margaret Kennedy became the first woman to have her name in a NYSE-member firm—Lubetkin, Regan & Kennedy. She traveled the country promoting financial advisory services for women, branded as the “Woman’s Dollar Program.” However, her efforts were largely profit-driven—that is, part of a postwar Wall Street campaign to popularize shareholding—rather than an effort to reform society-wide gender norms.Footnote 120 Thus, Margaret Kennedy was a business feminist but not a capitalist feminist.
In contrast to Kennedy, Julia Montgomery Walsh—a capitalist feminist—leveraged her position to campaign for women’s collective progress. Walsh climbed the ladder at Ferris & Co. to become a partner with the NYSE-member firm in 1959. After becoming the first woman American Stock Exchange member in 1965, she went on to found her own brokerage, Julia M. Walsh & Sons. Articulating the capitalist feminist message that “with economic independence comes freedom and power,” Walsh contributed to the Women’s Economic Round Table to facilitate networking and business education and the Washington D.C. Women’s Institute, which provided leadership courses to train women for high-profile jobs.Footnote 121 The first woman to address the Washington D.C. Bankers Association in 1971, Walsh used the opportunity to pressure over 500 male business leaders to place women in significant, decision-making positions. Before that audience, she contended that because women understood consumer spending habits, they represented “the wisest of all investors.” “You need them,” she argued.Footnote 122
Capitalist Feminist Tactics: Stressing Political Moderation
Roebling and capitalist feminists employed political tools to promote women’s economic advancement, advocating for legislation ranging from subsidized daycare services to government-funded job training programs for women. Moreover, for these accomplished professionals, endorsing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)—which would guarantee women equal rights under the law—fit their capitalist creed by underscoring success as independently earned. Similarly, supporting lawsuits to enforce Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulations sought a level playing field where women’s merit could be individually proven. While these political positions appeared drastic, even revolutionary at midcentury and beforehand—especially to conservative business leaders—they were viewed, particularly by other feminist groups, as moderate by the 1960s and 1970s. Given their centrist political beliefs—at least what came to be considered centrist—it is unsurprising that women who held capitalist feminist views, like Julia Walsh, could be found among mainline Democrats. They were also among moderate Republicans who favored the ERA and legalized abortion, such as the activists whom historian Catherine Rymph found fighting for the heart of the GOP but steadily losing ground to more conservative women between the 1960s and 1980s. Indeed, Roebling was one of these “liberal” Republicans.Footnote 123 The ideological moderation, capitalistic individualism, and elitism of these women put them at odds with feminist groups seeking bolder reconstructions of societal power. Although they eventually found some areas of agreement with labor feminists during the 1960s, capitalist feminists continued to clash with second-wave activists.
From the outset of her career, Roebling argued for “equal pay for equal work.”Footnote 124 And although she believed that “passing a law was not enough,”Footnote 125 Roebling was a staunch advocate of the ERA, serving as both a long-time member and as treasurer for the National Woman’s Party (NWP). Led by Alice Paul, who in the 1920s had helped author the ERA, the NPW focused its organizational efforts on obtaining the constitutional amendment.Footnote 126 All the women who, like Roebling, held capitalist feminist beliefs, supported the ERA. For example, Barbara Hackman Franklin used her position within the Nixon White House to champion the ERA, much to the chagrin of more conservative male staffers.Footnote 127
Support for the ERA placed capitalist feminists at odds with labor feminists—a group of union-connected women who fought equal rights legislation that threatened protectionist laws for women, such as state-mandated work hour limitations and wage floors.Footnote 128 In 1953, perennial ERA-sponsor, New York Congresswoman Katharine St. George (R)—who also had a career as a coal brokerage executive—displayed the elitism that rankled labor feminists seeking more robust protections for working women: “Women neither need nor want protective legislation. They want to be free to work as equals, asking for no special privileges.”Footnote 129 Still, women who held capitalist feminist beliefs insisted that they were also concerned about working-class women—Roebling’s support for domestic workers is discussed below. St. George encapsulated such capitalist feminist views as follows: “What a farce it is not to allow women to run elevators at night, at higher pay, or to wait on tables at night when trays are lighter and tips higher and then allow them to do the heavy cleaning in offices at low pay all through the night.”Footnote 130 Nevertheless, compared to labor feminists and social feminists who sought either more robust government interventions or a fundamentally transformed society, women with economics-first priorities were decidedly moderate.
During the 1960s, the views of capitalist feminists and labor feminists converged around a number of economic issues.Footnote 131 Under the Kennedy administration, Margaret Hickey served on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW), which was mostly stacked with labor feminists. Scholars have dismissed the commission’s 1963 report as “conservative,” but Dorothy Sue Cobble points out that it was widely perceived as incendiary for undercutting women’s traditional position as homemakers. While sidestepping the controversial ERA, the report’s recommendations otherwise fit capitalist feminist doctrine. PCSW proposals for government-funded childcare, education, and training—to prepare females of all ages for labor market participation—reiterated the report that Hickey’s advisory committee to the War Manpower Commission had made in 1945.Footnote 132
Hickey chaired and Roebling served on President Johnson’s Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW), which also displayed significant areas of harmony between labor feminist and capitalist feminist thought.Footnote 133 The CACSW brought state women’s commission representatives to Washington to discuss how they were addressing state laws related to women’s economic progress, such as married women’s rights to control their own wages and property. Additionally, most of the CACSW’s 1968 recommendations focused on women’s economic autonomy. The council proposed vocational training and education for women, income maintenance programs, government-funded daycare services, and the expansion of social insurance to cover women’s maternity leave. The most controversial suggestion—supported by both labor and capitalist feminists like Roebling—was a recommendation that states repeal laws making abortion a criminal offense.
Roebling was quite friendly with well-known labor feminist Esther Petersen, who had proposed the PCSW and also served on the CACSW. An AFL-CIO lobbyist and, under President Kennedy, the Director of the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, Petersen lobbied vigorously for passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act. The two women exchanged chummy correspondence, gifts, and Roebling hosted Petersen at a Trenton luncheon for the New Jersey Commission on the Status of Women. While the evidence is inconclusive, one wonders if Roebling was trying to convince the leading labor feminist to throw her support behind equal rights laws. Their friendship blossomed right around the time Petersen was beginning to waiver in her support for sex-based protective work regulations. Moreover, Cobble’s work on labor feminists shows how deep fissures between her subjects and pro-ERA activists began to close during this period.Footnote 134
The women’s friendship might also have convinced Roebling, like Petersen, to contribute start-up funds to the labor organization, the National Committee of Household Employees.Footnote 135 Cobble notes that middle-class and elite women joined with labor feminists in expressing concern about the obstacles that domestic caretaking duties created for working women.Footnote 136 Though Roebling had stated in 1957 that “[d]omestic duties” could be “shared by fine men and women of understanding,”Footnote 137 she recognized that restructuring familial caretaking arrangements could not always be left to the generosity of men. Thus, women like Roebling and Hickey had been calling for government-funded childcare services—particularly for low-income women—at least since the 1940s.Footnote 138 Capitalist feminists also backed efforts to increase the compensation of housekeepers and nannies and to secure them Social Security benefits. Roebling gave speeches and wrote articles advocating for higher salaries, professional development activities, and elevated roles for domestic workers, suggesting title changes like “household executive.”Footnote 139 Promoting similar concepts, Julia Walsh frequently boasted that she shared 20 percent of her salary with her nanny while providing her vacation time, a pension plan, and healthcare benefits “like any other valuable and important wage earner.”Footnote 140
Even as capitalist feminists entered tentative alliances with labor feminists, their free enterprise branding usually—though not always—pit them against second wavers. Betty Friedan—long concerned about women’s economic power—admired Roebling; in 1966, she requested an interview with the banker to discuss “the problems that remain to be solved.”Footnote 141 Whether they ever met is unknown. Both Friedan and Muriel Siebert were among a group of women whom stockbroker Julia Montgomery Walsh invited to her Upper East Side penthouse for a “brainstorming session” that included discussions about equal pay and the need for men to share in household and caretaking duties.Footnote 142 Despite some limited contact between the two groups, capitalist feminists routinely criticized second-wave feminists because their “radicalism” and emphasis on personal issues undercut the strategy of achieving women’s rights with a culturally mainstream, economics-first message. “They bring up,” griped Roebling, “whether a man should hold a door for a woman.”Footnote 143 Jo Foxworth labeled Betty Friedan’s famous book “The Feminine Mistaque,” contending that “militant feminists are out of date” because “women wield the power of the dollar.”Footnote 144 When reporters asked Barbara Hackman Franklin about “women’s lib,” her characteristically capitalist feminist reply was, “Bra-burning is irrelevant. I support equal rights for equal work.”Footnote 145 Meanwhile, second wavers’ contempt for women holding capitalist feminist views was on full display at the 1973 National Organization for Women (NOW) conference, where—as Debra Michals’ work demonstrates—attendees verbally attacked and ostracized a group of female entrepreneurs as “disloyal to feminism” for engaging the market.Footnote 146
The views of Roebling and women adhering to similar principles overlapped briefly with those of labor feminists. However, their distance from second wavers—a group that heavily influenced a key generation of women’s historians and gender scholars—ultimately limited the influence of capitalist feminists as they largely faded out of the historical narrative.
Capitalist Feminist Tactics: Utilizing the Organizational Path
Lacking one dominant organization—like second-wavers had with NOW—Roebling and other capitalist feminists joined a variety of middle-of-the-road rights organizations, such as the National Women’s Party and the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (BPW). Meanwhile, industry-specific women’s groups frequently acted as characteristically business feminist organizations by operating as vehicles for individual training and promotion while neglecting to push for women’s collective advancement.
While no single organization represented all the women discussed in this article, the BPW most exemplified the capitalist feminist creed. Roebling joined the BPW early in her career and remained an active participant.Footnote 147 Founded in 1919, the association primarily focused on eradicating sex-based employment discrimination. Margaret Hickey joined the BPW in the 1920s. She served as BPW president from 1944 to 1946 and as honorary president thereafter. The organization promoted the ERA and began lobbying for equal pay legislation in 1945. BPW leaders also encouraged the proliferation of state and federal “status of women” commissions. With approximately 3,000 constituent clubs by 1955, the BPW was able to tackle numerous state-level economic issues.Footnote 148 For decades, they lobbied state legislatures to pass equal pay bills and repeal laws that hindered women’s property ownership and access to credit.Footnote 149 Local BPW clubs petitioned businesses to hire women while providing members educational scholarships, job development seminars, and interview and resume preparation workshops.Footnote 150
Virginia Allan—who also held capitalist feminist beliefs—served as BPW president in 1963. An executive vice president of Cahalan Drug Stores in Michigan, Allan argued that women’s equality would “prove that our free enterprise system is the best for economic progress.” During her tenure, the BPW funded management training courses, sponsored leadership conferences, and developed the Womanpower Talent Bank to match qualified women to elite, private-sector jobs. Allan then headed Nixon’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities.Footnote 151
While the BPW advocated capitalist feminist ideas, numerous women’s business and professional groups sat on the sidelines—these associations are more accurately characterized as “business feminist.” For example, the National Association of Bank Women (NABW) primarily focused on education, hosting meetings and training sessions related to industry matters and frequently run by men. An energetic president would occasionally try to rally the troops to press for women’s equality and broader workplace opportunities.Footnote 152 However, since employers—that is, conservative male bankers—usually paid NABW dues, members and officers were constrained to focus on job-related training and eschew collective action.Footnote 153 Thus, while Roebling delivered a speech to the organization and its journal published at least one of her articles, she was not active in the NABW.Footnote 154 Similarly, the Financial Women’s Association of New York supported networking events for women who worked on Wall Street. Criticizing the organization’s complacency, Muriel Siebert helped establish the Women’s Forum in 1974 to more aggressively pressure Wall Street firms to place women in high-level positions.Footnote 155
Some capitalist feminist groups were informal. For example, a 1970s Denver-based group, known as the “Velvet Hammers,” lobbied business leaders to place women in executive and board positions by distributing the resumes of highly qualified women at social events. Among this group was a Guaranty Bank Vice President, B. LaRae Orullian, who joined with Roebling and other women to establish the Women’s Bank of Denver in 1978.
Operating in a predictable manner, given their backgrounds and beliefs, women like Roebling harnessed capitalist organizations as mediums for women’s progress. Explaining why they founded the Women’s Bank of Denver, Orullian stated that despite the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, bankers “frequently told women that they needed their father, husband, brother, grandfather, uncle or some related male to co-sign for their loans.”Footnote 156 Unlike women’s banks started by so-called “militant feminists,” the Denver bank enjoyed relative success. Embodying the competitive, individual-merit principles of capitalist feminism, Orullian explained that their bank operated “from the standpoint of a business, not a cause.”Footnote 157 When a journalist asked Roebling why she was taking a second job to act as the Denver bank’s board chairman, she replied, “one word: psychology.” She continued: “With all the enormous growth of women’s dollar power in recent years…there is still a high percentage of women, professional and otherwise, who are inhibited by what…has been called ‘a man’s world.’”Footnote 158
Conclusion
Emerging as they did in the shadow of neoconservatism and within a society hostile to ambitious women, Roebling and other professionally successful, elite white women, while following paths selected to encounter the least resistance in the fight for equality, nevertheless followed challenging, obstacle-strewn routes. These women attempted to lighten the crushing weight of masculine authority by tailoring their message to fit mainstream cultural standards and by espousing the same political and economic values as their male colleagues. However, unlike many business feminists who also embraced accommodationist tactics, women adhering to capitalist feminist thought looked beyond their own career success, applying considerable personal capital toward projects of women’s collective advancement. They sought not only corporate clout but all aspects of economic and financial strength as an expedient for also achieving political and social power.
These women are important subjects of study both because of their social struggle for equality and because of what scholarly neglect of their activism reveals about the distance between, on the one hand, women’s history and gender scholarship and, on the other hand, business history. While historians of gender have documented the vast role of women in the workplace, there has been a reluctance to view the activism of women who supported capitalism as truly “feminist.” However, as this article demonstrates, what today appears, among academics shaped by second- and third-wave feminism, like modest or unexceptional activities, were for capitalist feminists—viewed from their world of conservative American business culture and capitalist norms—risky undertakings in the pursuit of gender equality.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Amy Froide, Michelle Scott, Denise Meringolo, Andrew Nolan, Mirjam Voerkelius, Dan Ritschel, Brian Balogh, Lou Galambos, and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and useful feedback. Any remaining shortcomings are my own.
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