Collection of the Museum of American Finance
Certificate for five share of AT & T capital stock . In 1951 , the company became the first in America to reach a million shareholders , most of whom were individual women . many of whom were telephone operators . Soss argued that women deserved representation on AT & T ’ s board of directors , and that the company would benefit from it . She nominated to the board a Nevada businesswoman who owned half as much AT & T stock as all 17 of AT & T ’ s directors combined . Soss ’ s nomination was a protest gesture . There was no way for a floor nomination to succeed , because there weren ’ t enough shares represented at the meeting to win a vote .
When Soss was done speaking in favor of her nominee , a second woman , Cathrine Curtis , who headed a different organization , Women ’ s Investors of America , rose . She nominated a second woman candidate to the board . Like Soss , Curtis understood that her candidate stood no chance of election . Ballots were circulated while the company ’ s president moved on to other subjects , and then the defeat of the women candidates — and the successful election of 17 men — was confirmed . Among them was John W . Davis , the prominent Wall Street lawyer who had once opposed women ’ s suffrage in political elections .
But the meeting wasn ’ t over . President Wilson invited another investor , a retired Brooklyn schoolteacher named Ella Aronstam , to present a proposal she had submitted for her fellow shareholders ’ consideration . Taking advantage of the Shareholder Proposal Rule , enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) only nine years earlier , Aronstam had submitted a proposal for inclusion in the company ’ s proxy materials , which AT & T sent to its million shareholders in advance of the meeting . The company had included Aronstam ’ s proposal alongside an instruction that shareholders should vote against her .
Aronstam ’ s proposal asked the company to expand the board in order to add a woman . “ I don ’ t expect the resolution to pass ,” she told a reporter before the meeting , “ but we will put up a good fight .” When the votes were tallied , more than a million shares of AT & T stock were voted in favor of Aronstam ’ s proposal to add a woman to the board , just over 5 % of all the shares voted . Management had voted all of the proxies it had collected against the proposal .
AT & T ’ s vibrant 1951 annual meeting — thrumming with the active participation of women shareholders , who gave speeches , proposed resolutions and demanded board representation — was , in many ways , typical for its time , though it defies our present-day understanding of corporate history .
After World War II , a campaign to put women on boards of directors gained traction at a number of big companies . The campaign emphasized data showing that women had become a significant proportion of public company shareholders in the United States and were a majority at some big , blue-chip firms like AT & T . ( In fact , women had been a majority of AT & T ’ s shareholders since at least 1910 , and shareholders had first demanded a woman on AT & T ’ s board , noting women ’ s growing role , in 1933 .) Data on the sex of shareholders came from the companies themselves , many of which published breakdowns of their shareholders by sex in their annual reports . As the percentage of women shareholders surged , activists used the data to rally women shareholders to collective action .
Shortly after AT & T ’ s annual meeting , the Washington Post acknowledged the trend and declared that women were “ likely to crash board rooms faster than those who guard them may expect .” But it was the advocates of board diversity who would be surprised . Change was not , in fact , on the horizon . And after its 1951 annual meeting , AT & T stopped publishing data that revealed the proportion of its shareholders who were women , perhaps in an effort to deprive board diversity activists of information that could be used to catalyze change .
www . MoAF . org | Summer 2021 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 11