The Good Girls Revolt How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

by Lynn Povich

Ebook, 2012

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Library's review

This book requires us to hop into the Wayback Machine. Believe it or not, in the 1960s weekly newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek had very definite ideas on the proper place for women: the research department. (Another "believe it or not" factoid is that weekly newsmagazines were a big deal back
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then, which seems preposterous nowadays, but I digress.) Women were allowed to fact-check the writing that the big boys did, and sometimes they could even do some reporting (that is to say, researching facts and people and perhaps conducting interviews; all that information would then be handed over to the man who would actually write the article). Sexism, of course, is nothing new. But I think it's easy to forget how unthinkingly it was accepted, by both men and women, until the rise of Second Wave Feminism opened some eyes.

The author of The Good Girls Revolt was one of those researcher-reporters at Newsweek. Even after some of her female colleagues starting meeting and talking about what they could do to convince the magazine's publisher to give women a chance to write, she was conflicted. She had gotten the job through connections of her famous father, Shirley Povich, a legendary sportswriter for the Washington Post, which also owned Newsweek . (She's also the sister of the perhaps more famous but less respected Maury Povich, trashy TV talk show host, but he's barely mentioned.) Eventually she signed on, and the group of women hired a lawyer and confronted Newsweek management. Their first attempt in 1970 failed when management agreed to their demands and then just ... didn't do any of the things they promised. It took a second complaint and lawsuit in 1974 before changes were reluctantly made.

I was a little too young to remember this happening (I was 10 when they filed their second lawsuit) but it wasn't many years after that I realized I wanted to be a journalist, and a sportswriter to boot. Female sportswriters were thin on the ground in those days and it was a legitimate question whether that was even a practical career goal to have. All through junior high and high school I scoured every newspaper and magazine that I read, looking for female names in the bylines to reassure me that my dream was possible. Many of those names might not have been there for me to find without the actions taken by the "good girls" at Newsweek and others at other publications who followed in their footsteps.

The author researched, reported, and eventually wrote for Newsweek for many years, and it shows in the writing here. This is not poetry in prose form. It is written like a really long newsmagazine article (one of the fascinating parts of the book for me was Povich's detailing of the rigid "newsmagazine" style of writing and how challenging it could be to even good writers). But it's clear and well-organized, and it covers the topic really well. The final section revisits the key figures on both sides to see how the action affected them personally and professionally. It was not all sunshine and lollipops even for the women who ended up on the right side of history.

The only downside to reading this book is realizing that we've come a long way, baby, but we've sure got a long way to go. Women in 2017 can be acclaimed writers and reporters at magazines and newspapers and television stations — and face unimaginable vitriol online, including threats of death and sexual violence; criticisms that don't get leveled at their male counterparts. Still, they persevere, as the good girls of Newsweek did, and I salute them.
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Description

Politics. Nonfiction. HTML: It was the 1960s––a time of economic boom and social strife. Young women poured into the workplace, but the "Help Wanted" ads were segregated by gender and the "Mad Men" office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination. Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the "Swinging Sixties." Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller all started there as well. It was a top-notch job––for a girl––at an exciting place. But it was a dead end. Women researchers sometimes became reporters, rarely writers, and never editors. Any aspiring female journalist was told, "If you want to be a writer, go somewhere else." On March 16, 1970, the day Newsweek published a cover story on the fledgling feminist movement entitled "Women in Revolt," forty-six Newsweek women charged the magazine with discrimination in hiring and promotion. It was the first female class action lawsuit––the first by women journalists––and it inspired other women in the media to quickly follow suit. Lynn Povich was one of the ringleaders. In The Good Girls Revolt, she evocatively tells the story of this dramatic turning point through the lives of several participants. With warmth, humor, and perspective, she shows how personal experiences and cultural shifts led a group of well-mannered, largely apolitical women, raised in the 1940s and 1950s, to challenge their bosses––and what happened after they did. For many, filing the suit was a radicalizing act that empowered them to "find themselves" and fight back. Others lost their way amid opportunities, pressures, discouragements, and hostilities they weren't prepared to navigate. The Good Girls Revolt also explores why changes in the law didn't solve everything. Through the lives of young female journalists at Newsweek today, Lynn Povich shows what has––and hasn't––changed in the workplace..… (more)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2012
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