Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo Reveals Harassment and Assault on the NYSE Floor in Powerful Op-Ed

In honor of National Women’s Day, Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo talked about the difficult process of gaining respect as a female finance reporter.

She credited Barbara Walters as a guiding light in being the first woman on morning television and nightly news, and said that she knew it must have been difficult for her to earn her seat at the table because she faced similar issues.

“Even when I started broadcasting daily from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1995, women were a minority on the testosterone filled NYSE trading floor,” Bartiromo wrote for Forbes. “I remember there wasn’t even a ladies room anywhere in sight of my tiny office, three floors above the loud and very active trading floor. Actually the ladies’ room was one floor below the trading floor, in the basement.”

As the first finance reporter, male or female, to report directly from the trading floor, Bartiromo says she dealt with a boys’ club that didn’t want her there on two fronts: first, that she was a woman, and second, that she was looking to share insider information with the public about stocks.

“Many people did not like the idea of opening up this last bastion of testosterone -this secret nucleus of global money and investment called the trading floor on Wall Street,” she explained. “And opening it up to a woman no less – even worse -a woman with a camera. A reporter!?”

Bartiromo claims this led to incidents of harassment and bullying.

“I will not name the sick individual who decided to bump into me and ram his huge electronic trading device into my back while I was on the air live talking about AIG in which he had a position,” she wrote. “This later sent me to the NYSE medical office and him to a suspension. He was suspended for a few weeks. Again, he simply didn’t want me there making change.”

“Women were a minority and you better just have been grateful for being there. And that is how I felt at the time,” she continued. “I was grateful for the opportunity. But, I also understood the importance of my work, not only for empowering the consumer, but for showing the world a woman had a place in business, and in finance. And that drove me to succeed.”

[image via screengrab]