Documenting discrimination pays off for Wall Street woman

SAN ANTONIO -- It's not every woman who can say she changed a deeply embedded pattern of discrimination on Wall Street but Hydie Sumner won that right last week -- and won it big.

"To tell you the truth, I'm still a little in shock," Sumner said two days after a panel of arbitrators ordered Merrill Lynch, her old employer, to pay her $2.2 million for rank gender discrimination.

The panel ruled Merrill Lynch not only discriminated against Sumner, a former broker, but in fact the nation's largest brokerage firm has consistently paid women stockbrokers less than men and blocked women from promotions.

This is the first such ruling in the United States. With luck -- and more hard work from Sumner and other reformers -- it could help change the anti-female culture in the securities industry.

Seven years ago, Sumner and seven other women in the San Antonio office of Merrill Lynch filed the original lawsuit that quickly grew to more than 1,000 similar claims of bias against the company. Most of the other brokers settled out of court with Merrill Lynch, but Sumner persisted.

"I knew what happened was wrong, but I didn't know how wrong it was until it got documented in the lawsuit," Sumner said.

Indeed, Sumner's case offers a glimpse into the dark side of Wall Street's treatment of women. She knew that Stephen McAnally, her supervisor, harassed her.

However, she did not know until she saw the legal paper trail that when McAnally found out he was being investigated internally at Merrill Lynch, he distributed a copy of an article from Fortune magazine titled "Stop Whining." The article warned that employees who complained of discrimination risked losing their jobs.

In addition, Sumner did not know that a memo she sent to an anonymous hot line within the firm was relayed to her boss, who responded by asking, "What's her problem now?" Anonymous, in other words, was not anonymous.

Her problem was the same as a lot of female brokers across the country. No matter what she did, she couldn't earn the same as male brokers and could not achieve her goal of going into management.

Documents in her case show that as of 1999, Merrill Lynch had one female district director out of 27, 11 regional vice presidents and five sales managers -- this out of a total of 15,000 brokers.

The brokerage firm now says it's working to increase female managers (Sumner's old boss was replaced with a woman), but Sumner says more than 90 percent of current managers are male.

"If I had been given a choice, I would rather have stayed on my career track, been treated like a man and allowed to succeed," said Sumner. "But that didn't happen -- so I had to go to court."

It might happen yet.

The panel not only ruled that Merrill Lynch was unfair to Sumner and other female stockbrokers, but it also gave her the right to a reinstatement hearing at Merrill Lynch -- in other words, to get her job back and move up to management.

"I'm thinking about it," said Sumner. "It's what I wanted all along and I think I could make a big difference."

She already has. Over the years, Sumner and the other plaintiffs showed both determination and creativity. They showed up at stockholders meetings to register their complaints. They hired private airplanes and flew over sporting events -- such as NASCAR, the Super Bowl and the Masters golf tournament -- with banners that read: "Merrill Lynch Unfair to Women."

Since the decision, Sumner has heard from people all over the country. Her mother called from Honolulu, congratulated her and said, "I couldn't have done what you did."

Several female brokers have written her e-mails to offer gratitude. "Thanks for standing up for all of us," one wrote. Other women wrote to her for advice about how to combat discrimination.

"Believe in yourself," she told them. "Don't let the bad guys be your mirror. Document, document, document. And never give up hope."

Jan Jarboe Russell is a columnist with the San Antonio Express-News. E-mail: jjarboe@express-news.net

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