Originally posted by Toni
We are out there and our numbers are growing. We may not be very active on message boards, but do think about it... Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to commentary such as the majority of posts here. We have a lot of obstacles to overcome. We are still fighting for equal pay for equal work. Actually, this is a large reason there have been so few female traders until recent years. Simply put, few women had the money to afford to trade. Not because we spend it all either. In actuality many of us are extremely thrifty and seriously... how many of you grew up in homes where your mother ran the household? Do you think that would be an easy task? Especially when they were never even given a wage to handle that full time job? Even today, we must have a college degree to make what most high school male graduates do, thus putting off by 4-5 more years of earning a living and during that time incurring a debt that must be repaid, leaving little left to spend on things as speculative as trading. I do not think this is something to be overlooked when tackling this subject.
In recent years, however, things have turned around. More and more of us are beginning to earn higher wages and are getting hired into higher positions that, even 10 years ago, we could only dream of. Thus, we have seen a surge in the number of female traders in recent years. We face the same difficulties our male counter-parts do in overcoming our emotions to trade rationally and thus profitably. In mentoring I have found little difference between the sexes in how emotionally they react to the strains of trading. At first, I did find this interesting. I did expect women to react more with weeping and men with violent outbursts (broken monitors and like). Ironically, while I've never met a women that has broken any of her trading equipment, I've meant a great many distraught male traders. I think that on this note, the aforementioned myth can quite quickly be dispelled.
I think, that if this forum were more open to what women had to say about trading and trading discipline, that all parties viewing such discussions would benefit greatly. We all have different ways of looking at the world that are not easily bound by traditional world views and as such provide an excellent opportunity for self-improvement. If we (women) did not feel that every post we attempted to make that may be worthwhile were just going to be degraded into another sexist or immature remark, then you too would see that it is not really a matter of there not being many of us out there, but that it's a matter of us not being known to the rest of you.
"Another question is why didn't all the women you speak of come in and have fun with us? " - Don Bright666
Sitting behind a computer screen, we presently have the luxury of turning on and off the horrid and hateful remarks we've heard all of our lives. If this really the way you would like to see your mother, your sister, your daughter treated? It is not fun to come in and be cut down. We get our kicks from taking our gains from you guys in the market =) This thread is not a two-way street. It has more of a mob mentality going to it. Ironically, it turns on someone that actually had something worthwhile to say on the subject. When you've worked somewhere where your ideas are overlooked and only taken seriously when a member of the other sex agrees, or are in a workplace where it is commonplace for you to be harrassed as you are the only male and thus the person all the women in the company aim degrading remarks and complaints at and this is how you are treated most of the time and you can actually call that fun... well then maybe, just maybe, you can say I am wrong.
