Women and Money Series #1: What a Staircase in Paris Can Teach You About Investing
A forgotten story, the basics of stock investing, and why it’s time to climb the steps ourselves.
I’ve been talking a lot about building wealth, so I've decided to start a series on investment options.
We're kicking things off with the stock market because it’s both the most obvious and the most daunting.
But here’s the thing: it's not daunting because it’s hard. It's daunting because it was inaccessible to women for so long. And like any good human, we tend to be wary of what we don’t know.
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, let me tell you a story that illustrates this better than any chart or stat ever could.
Raymonde Charton: The Staircase Stockbroker
In 1724, the Paris Stock Exchange opened its doors at the Palais Brongniart. But not to women.
As Titiou Lecoq explains in her book “Le couple et l’argent: Pourquoi les hommes sont plus riches que les femmes” (The Couple and Money: Why Men Are Richer Than Women), it was long believed that women were not welcome along with other supposedly "noble" figures like priests and lawyers.
She suggests this belief was a convenient fairytale to obscure what was really at play: veiled sexism.
To me, it also sounds like a tactic to preserve the myth that dealing with money is somehow “degrading”... too base for the morally superior.
Another theory? That women were deemed too emotional for finance after their supposed overreaction to the collapse of the Compagnie des Indes in 1720 (which is laughable, considering that today women outperform men in the stock market by 1.8%! [1])
Whatever the excuse, the result was real. The Royal Decree of September, 1724 stated bluntly in Article 11:
“Women cannot enter the Stock Exchange for any reason or pretext.”
Charming…
This ban was reaffirmed by the 1801 ordinance and again by a decree in 1816.
And yet, in 1924, Raymonde Charton, a bank representative, showed up at the Paris Stock Exchange ready to work. Denied entry, she did the next best thing: she set up shop just outside. For 28 years, she worked from the “coulisses”, the stairs outside the building, relaying her trades through male agents who were allowed inside.
In 1952, she was finally granted official access. Her reflection says it all:
“If I requested permission, it was only so I could work more usefully. In 1924, I discovered the Stock Exchange and had to stand on the steps, behind the scenes, but not on the stage where the buying and selling took place... On July 4, with my official card in hand, I was finally allowed to act like my male colleagues”
(Source: Des Femmes Qui Comptent)
Women wouldn’t be officially admitted until 1967. Two years after marriage reform. 23 years after gaining suffrage in France.
Now ask yourself: Why did it take so long?
The Million-Dollar Answer
According to Lecoq, it's because the Stock Exchange is a place of power. And the fewer people have access to power, the more convenient it is for those who already hold it.
Now, I don’t believe that men are sitting in back rooms plotting to keep women out. I think it runs deeper, embedded in the structures that shaped our world, tracing all the way back to the control of lineage, private property, and women’s bodies in agricultural societies.
But that's a topic for another time.
What matters here is this: the Stock Exchange represents power, because in our world, money is power.
The Barriers We Still Face
Today, no law prevents us from investing. But we're still dealing with the psychological and structural aftermath of that exclusion.
The confidence gap is real. Studies show women are more likely to say "I don't know enough" before investing, while men are more likely to jump in with incomplete information. We've internalized the message that this space isn't for us.
There's also the complexity of our financial lives. We're more likely to be managing multiple competing priorities: helping aging parents, supporting partners through career changes, taking career breaks for caregiving. The "invest consistently for 30 years" advice assumes a linear path many of us don't have.
And let's be honest about the cultural messaging. We're told to be "smart with money" (translation: don't spend it) rather than "strategic with money" (translation: make it grow). We're praised for being savers, not investors.
Okay, You’ve Got My Attention… But How Does It Work?
Let’s do a quick deep-dive for context. I'll expand on this in another article.
What are stocks?
Stocks are ownership shares of a company.
Imagine a giant apple pie divided into thousands of pieces. You buy one tiny slice and that piece is yours. If you buy more, your influence over the recipe grows.
And shares?
A “share” is a unit of stock in a specific company. Think of “stock” as “fruit,” and “shares” as “3 pears.” One is general, the other is specific.
Why do companies sell shares?
To raise money. There are two main ways:
Debt: borrowing money they must repay with interest.
Equity: selling shares of ownership, no repayment needed.
Selling shares (especially through an IPO, or Initial Public Offering) lets companies fund projects, expand, and grow, without the burden of fixed payments.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
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