Pioneering women in the world of American finance are most often known for their work on Wall Street. In the 19th century, Victoria Woodhull opened the first woman-owned Wall Street brokerage firm; about a century later, in the 1960s, Isabel Benham became the first female partner at a Wall Street bond house while Muriel Siebert became the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
But a few years before Benham and Siebert made their ceiling-shattering moves, another woman broke into an old boys’ club of finance — not in New York, but in Chicago. In January 1961, Grace E. Hyslop became the first female member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Alice Gomstyn 