Hetty Green was born in 1834 to a family that made millions from whaling and shipping. She read the financial pages to her grandfather, took over accounting for the business when she was 13, and at 14 declared that she knew “as much about finance as any man”. By investing in government bonds, real estate, and railroads, she later turned her inheritance into a fortune that rivalled those of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. But it was her gender that made her career the subject of “endless comment, curiosity, and astonishment”, the New York Times wrote upon her death in 1916.

Much has changed for women working in finance in the century-plus since, although there is plenty of room for improvement. Women remain under-represented in the top echelons of US finance, at an estimated 25%. But there’s good news, too: Their clout has never been greater, nor their contributions more in demand.