Paving a New Path for Women

Upon graduating from Vassar in 1958, Carol Mathews ‘54 became secretary to an editor of a weekly investment magazine in New York City. She typed his weekly column and his letters, answered his phone and made coffee. Eventually, Carol began writing one or two  of her own articles a week. At that time, women typically were not allowed to author influential articles read by an all-male investment community. So she came up with aliases—C.R. Mathews; Rutgers Carroll; Matthew R. Mathew, etc.

After about three years, Carol decided she wanted to be a financial reporter at the New York Herald Tribune. There was no woman on the staff of 19 men, so every week for six months she went to the newspaper’s office to ask when they planned to hire her. Sure enough, she was hired in late 1962. Her beat was the American Stock Exchange, mutual funds, aspects of the energy industry and other stories as they developed. 

Carol moved to the New York Post in March 1966, where she wrote a daily article for the financial section, developed a thrice-weekly syndicated column called “Money Watch” distributed to 150 papers by the Los Angeles Times syndicate and signed with a speakers bureau to give talks around the country at conventions, investment seminars and women’s groups. Then, in 1986, Carol decided to join her husband of five years and retire after 28 years of writing daily about the stock market, Wall Street and just about any financial, business or money-related issue that caught her fancy. She loved every second of it.