ABSTRACT
A quick online search on the term ‘women investor’ will provide a list of resources specifically directed at women. This includes sites with advice for women and even firms with financial advisers marketing themselves specifically towards women. The quotation above comes from one such site. Northwest Mutual takes a particularly historical perspective, arguing that, unlike in the past, women now can be the arbitrators of their own financial destiny and furthermore, they argue that women today are financially able and astute in their financial operations. The view that women securing their own financial destiny is something new is, in part, what this chapter seeks to dispel. We show that not only were women involved in capital markets from their inception but that women showed considerable financial acumen and profited from such investments, even to the point of making money while men as a group lost money.
