“When I got that tap on the shoulder I just was flabbergasted. I was amazed.”

Brittany Sharpton recalled the day last November when she was laid off from her job as an infrastructure analyst at Citigroup. When the 23-year-old joined the investment firm in 2007 she envisioned rising up through the ranks and becoming a senior manager. Instead, she was handed a pink slip, and according to Sharpton, every woman in her group was let go.

“There was just absolutely no discretion, no regard not only with performance but keeping a generation of women in the group,” Sharpton said.

Susan Antilla, who wrote about sexual discrimination on Wall Street in “Tales from the Boom-Boom Room,” is not surprised. She says historically whenever there’s a recession, women on Wall Street lose their jobs.

“Inevitably, we have downturns, and the downturn comes and whack, they’re gone.”

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