| Andi Zeisler of Bitch Media further explains the...

10th Sep 2012

Andi Zeisler of Bitch Media further explains the story of Lynn Povitch’s The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace:

In 1970, Povich was part of the first-ever class-action sex-discrimination suit, filed by 46 female employees at Newsweek. The women were clippers, researchers, and, in a few cases, reporters. If they expressed interest in writing, they were promptly rebuffed with the edict “Women don’t write at Newsweek.” But even those who didn’t necessarily aspire to the top of the masthead realized that the subservient role of women at the magazine wouldn’t change unless they forced a few hands. Their EEOC suit stated that the women had been “systematically discriminated against in both hiring and promotion and forced to assume a subsidiary role”; with strategic irony, it was filed the same day that Newsweek’s cover story on the feminist movement, titled “Women in Revolt” hit newsstands.

Read the rest at the Los Angeles Review of Books.