"The Good Girls Revolt:" Lynn Povich On How The Women Of Newsweek Changed The Workplace

The 1960s was 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 office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination.

Author Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones; she landed a job at Newsweek. It was a top-notch job for a woman at the time, and it was an exciting place. Newsweek was renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the Swinging Sixties. Yet the organization unknowingly sat on a discriminatory powder keg of its very own making.

For women, the job was a dead end. Women researchers sometimes became reporters, but rarely writers, and never editors. Any aspiring female journalist was told, “If you want to be a writer, go somewhere else.” So the women of Newsweek decided to sue their employer.

Lynn Povich talked with the CBC's Jim Brown about what it was like for her and the women of Newsweek to fight for the right to equal treatment in their workplace. Other Stories On KUOW Presents:

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