Regarded as the epicenter of the Gilded Age, New York City attracted countless women looking to enter the workforce. Among them was Margaret Getchell, who began her career as a clerk at R.H. Macy & Co.—originally a dry goods store in Manhattan. Moving up the ranks, Getchell found success with innovative marketing ideas, pushing the business to expand into a full-fledged department store.

Not only did Getchell propose the iconic red star logo that Macy's still uses today, she also suggested keeping the store open on Christmas Eve to accommodate holiday shoppers. Additionally, Getchell had the foresight to expand the store's inventory, introducing new lines like toys, books and  picnic supplies. When soda fountains became all the rage in Europe, Getchell insisted on installing one near the back of Macy's, ensuring customers would have to walk through rows of merchandise on the way to and from the fountain.

By 1866, six years into her tenure, Getchell was promoted to the role of superintendent, making her second in command at the original Macy’s on 14th Street and Sixth Avenue.

A few doors down from Macy's, on 14th Street, was a showroom run by Ellen Demorest, best known for popularizing at-home sewing patterns.

Instead of paying professional seamstresses, women could rely on Demorest’s patterns to sew their own clothing. These patterns could be found in Mme. Demorest's Mirror of Fashions. Featuring fashion illustrations, as well as stories about style trends and domestic life, the periodical run by Demorest and her husband William, became a must-read publication for women during the Gilded Age.  

With her husband, Demorest also co-founded the Demorest Fashion and Sewing Machine Co., which gave average Americans a chance to buy sewing machines for a fraction of what others cost.

Anna Sutherland Bissell was a Canadian-born American based in Grand Rapids, Michigan who became a top business leader in the male-dominated field of manufacturing. She worked alongside her husband, Melville Bissell, who invented and patented the carpet sweeper in 1876. Known as a "crackerjack saleslady," Bissell led the company’s marketing efforts, achieving one of her greatest successes by personally securing a deal to sell their invention in Wanamaker’s renowned department store.

When Bissell’s husband passed away in 1889, she was named president of the company, which she ran for 30 years. She’s considered by many to be the first female CEO of a major institution (although it wasn’t until about three decades after her appointment as president of the company that the term "chief executive officer" was widely used).

Madam C.J. Walker built a cosmetics empire in St. Louis when the battlefields of the Civil War were still smoldering. Born Sarah Breedlove, she was conceived just after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation—making her the first in her family to be born free.

When she became a mother at 17, Breedlove became determined to rise out of poverty. In 1905, she founded her own cosmetics company in Denver, Colorado and rebranded herself as Madam C.J. Walker. She promoted her flagship product, "Wonderful Hair Grower," which she personally developed to address the hair and skin conditions caused by poor living conditions faced by many impoverished Black Americans.

However, Walker went beyond just selling a product; her rise to success stemmed from empowering other women. She created a network of sales hubs in cities like Atlanta, Denver and New York City, turning her business into a movement. Her success was promulgated by Black women across the country who sold her product in sales fleets of over 20,000 fellow entrepreneurs.

“I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them,” Walker said. Thousands of Black Americans heeded her call to action, making her the first Black American woman worth over a million dollars.

Once she made her money, Walker's generous contributions helped build schools, financed other Black American professionals, funded arts, sciences and education, and bolstered organizations like the YMCA and NAACP.

While Getchell, DeMorest, Bissell and Walker made strides in retail, others like Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin focused on finance. The two were the first women to open a brokerage on Wall Street.

Called the “Bewitching Brokers of Wall Street,” the sisters’ Woodhull, Claflin & Company opened on February 5, 1870 in the Financial District of New York City. The sisters attracted a massive crowd of potential investors—largely women—eager to support the venture. They had tapped into a previously unrecognized source of investment capital—wealthy women. Their Wall Street company catered exclusively to affluent women, with the goal of empowering the demographic with a tool they had historically been excluded from: market influence.

Reportedly bankrolled by railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, Woodhull and Claflin made their investors millions with financial advice, and the sisters made history with their prowess in not just the stock market, but also social reform.

Woodhull made a bold statement when she became the first woman to run for U.S. president in the 1872 election. Women couldn’t vote for office, but they could run for office, and with her fortune and influence, she put her name on the ballot against two Civil War hero General Ulysses S. Grant and newspaper magnate-turned congressman Horace Greeley. Her campaign was ultimately symbolic (at the time Woodhull was under 35, the minimum age for presidential nomination), but her candidacy asserted that women had the power to be included in spaces traditionally reserved for men.

Another savvy investor was Hetty Green, who not only surpassed a worth of $26 million by 1885, but eventually became the richest woman in America by the end of her career.

“Hetty Green was not only a story during the Gilded Age—she was the story of the Gilded Age,” says financial historian Mark Higgins, who considers Green to be “the best investor in all of U.S. history.”

At the age of 30, Green inherited $5 million from her father and dedicated the rest of her life to accumulating even more wealth.

Known for her sharp financial acumen and ability to sense opportunities before her peers, Green thrived during the Panics of 1873, 1884, 1893 and 1907, while many of her contemporaries "lost everything,” says Higgins.

He explains that “a seminal moment in U.S. financial history” was the Panic of 1907. She had foreseen the crisis and had amassed a large cash horde to deal with it, utilizing “contrary investment”— a tactic now known as “buy low sell high." In fact, she personally lent approximately $1 million to the New York City government, which was running out of cash.

During the crisis, she was the only woman invited to a crucial meeting with financier J. Pierpont Morgan who was organizing private rescues to avoid a complete collapse of the financial system, says Higgins. “The fact that Hetty was invited to the meeting is no small feat. Women were not allowed to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, serve on corporate boards, or even vote in elections.”

When Green passed away in 1916, her estate was worth $100 million.

Black entrepreneur Maggie Lena Walker (no relation to Madam C.J. Walker) built communities by starting a newspaper, a bank and a department store at the turn of the 20th century in Richmond, Virginia.

Walker made history in 1903 as the first Black woman to charter a bank when she founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. “Let us have a bank that will take the nickels and turn them into dollars,” she said.

“We think of Walker as an entrepreneur and an innovator … but what she was inventing was a novel path towards Black progress during the depths of the Jim Crow-era,” says Ethan Bullard, museum curator at the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site.

As a lifelong devotee to the Independent Order of St. Luke’s, Walker used the Black fraternal and mutual aid society as a means to encourage her community to break free from financial constraints. She frequently wrote editorials in the group’s newspaper, the St. Luke Herald, to encourage people to seek financial freedom.

Walker created job opportunities for Black Americans, especially women, whenever possible. Whether it was appointing them to the board of directors at the bank or employing this group in sales roles at her short-lived department store, St. Luke Emporium, she worked to make sure Black women in her community were offered pathways to prosperity.