By Lynn Povich
On March 29, three young women writers at Newsweek wrote a piece called “Are We There Yet?” questioning how much had changed since 46 women filed charges of gender discrimination against the magazine in 1970. I was one of those 46 women who, 40 years ago, terrified and triumphant, announced our suit on the Monday that Newsweek published a cover story entitled “Women in Revolt,” written by a woman outside the staff because the magazine had no experienced woman writer. (I had just been promoted to junior writer to write fashion.)
We were the first women in the media to sue for sex discrimination and we had a solid case. Women were segregated into the lowest category of the news magazines and rarely promoted out of it. Even though we were graduates of the top colleges and universities, we were hired as researchers while men with equal qualifications were hired as writers.
Newsweek quickly came to the bargaining table and signed an agreement promising to hire and promote women. But two years later, after little progress had been made, we sued again and this time we got what we wanted—that a third of reporters and writers be women, a third of researchers be men, and that by the end of 1975 a woman become a senior editor. Although I had been a plaintiff, I was promoted into management in August 1975, the first woman Senior Editor in Newsweek’s history. Another beneficiary was IWMF board member Eleanor Clift, who was promoted from office manager in the Atlanta bureau to reporter, where she covered Jimmy Carter all the way to the Presidency, becoming Newsweek’s first female White House correspondent in the West Wing covering the President, not, typically, the First Lady.
Women at Newsweek made great progress in the following years – covering wars; editing “Nation,” the most important section in the magazine; becoming bureau chiefs; and writing in every section of the magazine, not just in the Back-of-the-Book. And women at many other news organizations – Time, The New York Times, NBC, The Reader’s Digest, the Associated Press – also filed charges of gender discrimination.
If you read what the young women at Newsweek wrote recently, the numbers at my former magazine don’t look so good. While there are no longer researchers on staff – and all the women are now reporters, writers or editors – only six of the last 49 cover stories were written by women. In the media world in general, there has never been a woman editor at one of the nation's leading newspapers, including at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. (The exception is The Chicago Tribune.) And there has yet to be a female head of a major broadcast or cable news network.
Numbers ebb and flow, and this is just a snapshot of this moment in time. But it is worrisome. Sexism is more subtle today, particularly in a subjective profession like journalism. I am proud that these young Newsweek women woke up to their – our – history and persisted in getting the piece into the magazine. After 40 years, we’re back in the news again – for better or worse.
Lynn Povich is a board member and former co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation. She is writing a book on the 1970 women’s lawsuit against Newsweek.