Tales from the Boom-Boom Room: How Women Fought Wall Street Harassment and Exposed the Financial Industry's Toxic Culture

by Susan Antilla

In the 1990s, women in record numbers looked to Wall Street as a great place to build successful and lucrative careers.What many of them found there was not meritocracy, but a boy’s club of misbehaving stockbrokers, and a workplace culture that knew no bounds in its harassment and discriminating behavior toward women. Sometimes it was threatening language; other times it was physical intimidation; but often, it was much worse. Eventually, women who were subjected to this behavior exploited a loophole in stock-exchange rules and opened the door to unprecedented lawsuits that shook Wall Street to its very core. Taking its title from the notorious party room at Smith Barney's Garden City, New York branch, Tales from the Boom-Boom Room is the detailed and riveting insider account of the lewd and obscene behavior that has run rampant on Wall Street. In this edition, author Susan Antilla provides a new afterword maintaining that despite some improvements in workplace conditions, women continue to face an uphill battle on Wall Street.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Womens, Sociology, Feminism

368 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Nancy]

The women this book is written about are heros. They have led the way to a much better working environment for all the rest of us, especially those of us on Wall Street. Although the outcome of some of the cases are discouraging their courage and suffering really has made a huge difference on how women are treated in the office. ( no thanks to Friedman and Stowell) I loved this book. I wish this story was more well known. Would love to see a documentary made about this similiar to "Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room"

If you like this book for the historical pieces of the investment industry you may also like "Resurrecting The Street: How U.S. Markets Prevailed after 9/11" by Jeff Ingber.

[Tameron Keyes]

I loved this book! It is an excellent investigative story about how women on Wall Street eventually got the opportunity for justice. I benefited from the work done by all the women Susan describes. That is exactly how the lawsuit settlement was suppose to work and it did. It's is incredible event and I'm very grateful for it. I could have never won my own lawsuit without them.
However, the story didn't stop there. Individual women could take it one step further if the remedy offered was not just which is exactly what I did. I wrote about it in No Backing Down, My Story of Suing One of the Largest Investment Firms in the World and Winning. The fight for justice is not even remotely easy and is still at a major turning point for women. It's not over. The saga continues. Check out No Backing Down.

[Kelli Reddy]

Excellent book, well researched and the story is compelling. About sexual harassment and discrimination in the 1980’s and 90’s and the effort to file lawsuit and not be forced into arbitration where trials don’t follow due process and the media was excluded from knowing the rulings. Sad to think women were still being discriminated and held back/demoted throughout brokerage firms while I was in school. Maternity leave wasn’t a right and neither did complaining to management or HR get you far. Still having a hard time digesting that these injustices were occurring only 20 years ago.

[Gertrude Whitman]

Hard to believe this all happened so long ago; the events in the book end in 2002, still very much worth reading if you'd like to gain perspective on where we stand today in terms of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace and the requirement that brokers sign away their individual rights to sue (mandatory arbitration) in order to gain employment with a reputable brokerage.

[Peter]

Two words: Jamie Dimon. But seriously (although his name does come up several times).

When I moved from Boston to New York one of the first things I noticed was the lack of decent radio music stations (this was in 1993). In Boston there were cutting edge rock stations, classical stations, jazz stations, experimental music stations (well, perhaps just programs on the jazz stations). In NYC, it seemed like there was nothing but pop. This matched (or shaped) my impression of NYC as a cultural backwater, a city awash in appeals to what sold the most to the exclusion of taste.

This story of investigative journalism carefully documents that culture (late 80s to late 90s), as it affects the women who work in the financial industry. And it appears that not much has changed since then. God bless.

[Jennifer Arnold]

If you thought a general impression of Wall Street based on Boiler Room, Gordon "greed is good" Gecko, Charlie "Blue Horseshoe loves Teldar Steel" Sheen, Glengarry Glen Ross and Porky's might have been a tad inaccurate, Antilla's expose on the treatment of women in big brokerage houses throughout the 90s would prove you wrong in many respects.

[Tia]

Though a little dry, Antilla's book is incredibly thorough. Before reading it, I had no idea that women had virtually no ability to sue for sexual harassment damages under the arbitration system that Wall Street imposed for years. Also, unsurprisingly: assholes on Wall Street are sexist.

[Katherine]

Great account of sex discrimination in the financial services industry. (When I read it, I got really mad.) It reads a bit slow, but the content is good.

[Kseniya]

Mighty dry with a very strong straight-to-the-facts, reporter type feel.
Still very eye opening however.
A good academic read.

[RK Byers]

I was working.at Smith Barney when all of this happened and remember explicitly being sent down to HU for founders day. wow.

[Katharine]

Thoroughly researched and engrossing. I hope I'll see a different side to the trading floor now that it's 2015, because the events and treatments portrayed are frightening.