“Look, when I was pregnant here,” I start to softly explain, “I would cover my stomach when someone downstairs dropped too many f-bombs on me. I had to laugh with King when he mooed at the sight of my breast pump. I ignored the time someone taped torn panties on my screen when I came back from my honeymoon. I’m just depleted from all of this. I don’t want to hear slut jokes all day long. I don’t want to work in a frat house. I want to be paid equally. I want my input on abnormal rates of risk we take to be heard. I want this place to live up to its potential.
“This is the same environment your daughters will work in, getting her ass pinched like it’s a 1960s advertising agency, unless we do something to fix our broken culture.”
The women in the room aren’t moving. They look like they’re desperate to hear more yet know they should leave. I can almost hear them trying to control themselves from speaking.
Keep going, I say to myself, so I do.
“Most of you came here from business school. You thought you’d run a division of this place or lead this bank in some meaningful way. I know women like you because I’m just like you. By now you get the joke. We aren’t going anywhere. This is it for us. No women are in truly senior positions that matter. We all have fancy titles that are worth as much as Feagin Dixon stock is going to be worth once this mortgage fa?ade cracks.”
I can see Kathryn looking upset under all of that hair. I think she really wants to join in; she’s obviously weighing the consequences.
“Look, you’re all exceptional women who get paid to be creative and smart. Why are you able to turn that off, to act stupid and submissive when it comes to things that matter?” I ask.
They won’t make eye contact with each other or me. They act like frightened children who’ve been yelled at. They can’t wait for the adult to leave. Everything depends on the next move.
Everything.
A full minute passes. It’s as if we’ve been told to freeze while someone paints a portrait of us to capture a significant moment before everything will change. But the change doesn’t come.
A waiter walks into the room and stops abruptly, sensing that something has just happened. Someone sighs. Another looks at her watch, then rises slowly. Another clears her throat and walks over to Blythe to shake her hand good-bye. I look down at my plate while the rest start filtering gratefully toward the door. Nobody says anything as they all try to exit as quietly and fast as possible. I’m left alone in a room of amped-up microphones to record voices that don’t speak.
CHAPTER 26
Golden Handcuffs
BACK IN 1996, when I was first hired here, I noticed a woman straining to keep her skirt zippers up and her belly sucked in. She didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant until she had what appeared to be a watermelon under her dress. She returned from maternity leave to find her accounts ransacked, and because there was not much of a job left for her, she quit. When I anticipated the same happening to me with the birth of my first child, I got ready. I made myself as irreplaceable to my accounts as possible. I made promises to clients that I was coming back in a short amount of time and I did. I only lost two small accounts.
I paid attention as other banks were accused of this same practice along with the harassment-as-usual environment. I watched lawsuits filed against Smith Barney and their “boom-boom room,” watched as a Citibank boss was accused of noting which women “liked to blow.” When Nomura was sued after their traders apparently told female colleagues they belonged at home cleaning, I was sure something would come of it. The lawsuit was thrown out. Then a British bank, HBOS, was sued with X-rated details that I was sure would sound scarily familiar to Feagin Dixon and force a change, but again the suit was thrown out.
For years, allegations have been settled in arbitration and the quiet exodus of women in banking has remained hushed and steady. Merrill Lynch had fifty complainants that increased to almost nine hundred by the time their class-action suit was filed. An arbitration panel found there was a pattern of bias against female brokers. As the winning lawyer explained, “The essence of the finding is the standard operating procedure at Merrill was to discriminate against women.” That cost them $39 million. Feeling emboldened that same year, some women from Morgan Stanley opted out of arbitration and filed for class action status. The members of the GCC all waited to hear if their details were similar to ours. The night before the story was to be told in a public courtroom, the women settled for $54 million and the details remained private.
A few months ago a prominent banker at another big bank was sued for relentlessly commenting on women’s breast size. The female executive settled for $1.3 million. I have twelve years of boob comments under my bra, a relative treasure trove in current litigation dollars, but the idea of suing Feagin Dixon seems absurd to me. Dixon is my firm. I’d be suing myself.
The Glass Ceiling Club gave me a frosty reception after my unsuccessful performance at the Gruss lunch. Amanda, Amy, and Violette were in a private conference room when I got back downstairs so I joined them there to tell them everything.
“That’s it?” Amy asked, thinking that I was kidding. “Nothing?”