December 1, 2023 • 19 mins
The men in the office called them “Dollies,” and they had had enough. In 1970, 46 women who were not allowed to be writers sued Newsweek magazine for gender discrimination – paving the way for generations of women journalists to follow. Jess reflects on discovering that story when she was a young staffer at Newsweek four decades later, and how it led to her first book, Feminist Fight Club, which was inspired by those women. Plus, Susie asks what’s changed for women reporters today.
FOR MORE:
- Are We There Yet? Forty Years Later, Revisiting a Landmark Sex Discrimination Suit (Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball, Newsweek, 2012)
- The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace (Book by Lynn Povich)
- Good Girls Revolt (Amazon TV series based on the book)
- Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace (Book by Jessica Bennett)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Where this story really begins is the place where all
good revelutions begin, which is the ladies.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yes, I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I'm Susie bannakerm.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
This is in Retrospect, where each week we delve into
a cultural moment that shaped us.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Most of the time we'll be diving into the past,
but sometimes there will be a thread we want to
follow up on. This is one of us.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So, jess we released an episode about a famous Newsweek
cover story that declared women over forty were more likely
to be killed by a terrorist than to get married
on it, And to be clear, that's absolutely not the case.
Cover absolutely not true, And if you're listening to this
(00:50):
and you haven't listened to that, you should go check
out that episode. But what we're talking about today is
something that came up kind of tangentially that I want
to ask you more about, which is the fact that
essentially we kind of have the women of Newsweek to
thank for our careers in journalism. So tell me why.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, So this came up in the episode because in
order to understand how that cover story came to be,
you kind of have to understand the history of Newsweek,
and the history of Newsweek involves forty six female staffers
in the year nineteen seventy suing the company for gender
discrimination in the first lawsuit of its kind.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Oh wow, because there were other lawsuits after that, right.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It actually paved the way for many of the other lawsuits.
And essentially, at this time, women were told they could
not be writers at Newsweek.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So they were like, they could just be copygirls, right, you.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Could be a copygirl, you could be a researcher. I
mean effectively they were writing, but they would never get
a byline.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And so when you got hired, you would come in,
you know, they'd be like, whatever, here's your desk, here's
what you're going to be doing. But just so you know,
women don't write here. And they would say it bluntly
like that, and that was I guess okay at the time.
So eventually these women got fed up and they organized.
Seems reasonable, and they filed a lawsuit. And so where
(02:12):
this story really begins is the place where all good
revolutions begin, which is the ladies room. Yes, they began
chatting with each other in the bathroom and talking about
how messed up this was, And so they came together
and they organized, and they hired a woman who was
then a little known civil rights lawyer by the name
(02:34):
of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congress woman and now congresswoman,
and they sued their bosses. And what happened was, after
they sued their bosses, it set off this chain reaction.
So then the women of Time magazine sued, and then
the women of Ladies Home Journal, which like, now we're
like Ladies' home Journal what, but back then was one
of the few places where women, you know, really saw
(02:56):
their stories represented.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But also, sorry, only men wrote for Ladies Home Journal, Like,
that's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So all of the top editors at Ladies Home Journal
were men, and so they actually staged a sit in
in one of the editor's office. They and I think
they like jumped on tables. It was a whole thing.
And same with the New York Times. The New York
Times also sued in the same era. So you know,
in some ways, we actually have these women to thank
for the fact that we are now journalists. I can
(03:24):
of course be writers, like nobody would ever dare say
to us that a woman can't be a writer.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, although I will say one thing that I noticed
when I started working in television is that most of
the staff was female and a lot of the bosses
were still well, that certainly still a thing, and that's
certainly still a thing in a lot of media newsrooms.
I mean, I think obviously I've been in the business
a long time, so things have changed to some I
mean they've changed because I was able to run a newsroom, right,
(03:51):
That in and of itself is progress, But it's not
as much progress as you would hope in some of
these cases. And what's certainly the case is, I know
I've never been paid the same as my male counterparts
of my newsrooms, and I have been well paid. I'm
not complaining, But what's very clear to me is that
I know what comparable men have made in these jobs,
(04:12):
and it's never been, Wow, the same.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, yeah, So how.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Did you come to kind of find this story about Newsweek? Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Right, of course? So okay, the ladies room. That's where
I found myself in the year twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
What a fun parallel with two.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Of my female colleagues, I think you know them, Jesse
Ellison and Sarah Ball complaining as we were writers at
Newsweek about the fact that we felt like we weren't
getting ahead, and you know, we'd come of age and
come up with this class of interns at Newsweek back then,
and we could track essentially how the boys, the men
(04:48):
in that class were getting promoted more quickly than us,
and they were getting more bylines. And I think that,
you know, we started pulling the numbers in that year
all but I think four of the magazine's cover st
of which they were like forty or something, were written
by men. And so we were getting a little bit disgruntled,
and we were meeting in the lady's room to talk
about this. And so one day maybe word had gotten
(05:12):
out or like around friendly faces, you know, people knew that,
like this was an issue. I came back to my
cubicle and there was a book on it that had
been left there by one of our librarians, a man
who was lovely. It was Susan Brown Miller's feminist Classic
In Our Time, which I had not read at the time,
and there was a post it note on a page,
(05:34):
and so I'm like, oh, what is this? I opened
the page.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I love that it feels like very subversive. It does right, and.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So like he like slipped through the book exactly, and
on this page was a chapter about the women of
Newsweek whould sue the magazine for gender discrimination. And I
know this sounds crazy now in twenty twenty three to
think that, like we didn't know this story and it
wasn't googleable, but we did not know this story where
I had no idea that this had happened, and we
(06:00):
had no idea we were working in this very place
where history had been made.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Also, how would you know? It's not like the magazine
would have celebrated this part of its history, right, Like
I'm sure they weren't exactly talking about it.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And it sort of had just been lost to time.
Like once we started asking everyone, people would be like, oh, yeah,
like maybe there was a Supreme Court case, Like there
were all these sort of myths around it, but nobody
had talked about it in so long, and the original
articles covering it were all in like microfeche in the
New York Public Library. So when we frantically went back
(06:32):
to our desks and were like googling what had happened,
we couldn't find anything. Oh my god, that's wild, And
so what happened was, you know, like, as all good
reporters do, we started reporting it out basically in secret,
and did any.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Of your editors? Were there any female editors?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
There were some women editors yet.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
But none of whom were like, you know you felt
like you could go to, because I mean, let's be
fair to women who probably were editors at that time,
like if you made waves, you weren't going to stay
an editor for very long totally.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And so what we started doing is we reported it
in secret, and we found the original women who were
part of the suit. We were like calling them up, but
there are a lot of them still lived in New
York and they, you know, hadn't heard from anyone about it.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
They must have been so happy to get it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And then we eventually told male editor Mentor, a gay
man who we loved and really trusted, and he sort
of coached us through this because what we wanted to
do was actually publish this story. We wanted it was
coming up on the fortieth anniversary of that lawsuit, and
so we were like, yeah, well let's report it out.
Let's look at what has actually changed, Let's weave our
(07:36):
own stories is discrontled into it, and let's publish it.
But that, of course was controversial.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I mean I can only imagine they must have hated that.
But did you eventually publish it?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yes, So what happened was and you know, this sort
of gets all lost in the chaos of Newsweek when
you would ultimately join it. This was like right before
the magazine was going to be put up for sale.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So wait, this was that close to when I worked in.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
You because when did you start? Twelve?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Maybe twenty ten? Actually twenty now, maybe twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Wait, yes, it was about a year before, about a
year because the anniversary of this lawsuit was in twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, because I sort of like remember this story, but
I don't think I had any idea that it was
so close to the time when I started working there.
I mean that was really recent.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It was pretty recent. Yes, And at the time that
this was happening, you know, there were a number of
complaints at different media institutions about sexism and gender discrimination.
This was also at the time that David Letterman had
that whole thing where he was found to be sleeping
with one of his assistants or his intern or something.
So there was just like pre me too. This was
(08:42):
in the air, and so yeah, what we did was
we reported it in secret for months and months and months,
and we ultimately wrote a draft in secret with this
editor helping us, and then we presented it to the
top editors and the editor in chief, who ultimately recused
him himself from the process.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
John And had he been there at the time of
the lawsuit, No, no, no, no, that's so interesting that
he had to recuse himself because he felt like some
of the complaints were about the current state of Vedews round.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yes, and because we had done all these tallies, we
had looked at bylines, we had looked at the staffing,
and we had put those data points into the piece
and so then it sat there and floated in this
like awkward limbo for a number of months.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, they must have just been like shell shocked, because
I can just imagine being on the other side. You're
like presented with this thing. You can't ignore it, and
you know you're going to take it somewlace else if they.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Don't know this, and we you know, this was really
the only job that the three of us had had.
It was the three of us who had co authored
it together.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
And it's so Baldy so impressive.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Thank you. I mean now now I don't know if
it seems so much, but at the time it did
feel scary. But also we were so fed up that
we were like, all right, fire us, like we don't care,
Like you know, the worst thing that can happen is
we get fired.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
For which actually we know would have been the best
thing that could have happened, because you would have gotten
so much attention for that.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It would be interesting to see if we had then.
But anyway, ultimately they did publish it. It went through so
many rounds of editing. Every single editor in the building
weighed in on it, but we ultimately were really happy
with it, and it was published, and we did this
whole photo shoot where we got those women from the
original lawsuit together.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
We should post that on the Instagram, Oh yeah, we can.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, And then you know, shortly after that, Newsweek got
put up for sale, and it was like any progress
that this had made in that moment was completely forgotten
because we had bigger problems.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Also, I think there was this weird idea that because
Tina Brown was the editor after the sale and because
she was a woman, that somehow that like solved all
the problems.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Tina Brown, for those who don't know, was this famous editor.
She's British, but she had come over to run The
New Yorker and Vanity Fair and had made a huge
name for herself. She writes about the Royals.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, and I mean she.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Had been brought in to run the new Newsweek.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah. I mean what's interesting about it is she is
a feminist by every measure. But I will say that
that newsroom did not feel not sexist to me for
a variety of reasons. Like I remember very clearly that
when I was there, there was a well known writer
who came to town and left for lunch with one
of the assistants and came back, and it was very
(11:20):
obvious to me what had happened at lunch. Okay, you know,
and that was very much scene as just like a thing. Yeah,
that happened in a newsroom. You know.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
You saw me too when this stuff wasn't really talked about.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Okay, So wait, this does somehow connect to your book, though,
So I want you to tell that part of this, Yeah,
of course.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Okay, So we're meeting in the ladies room, we write
this story, we find the women from that original lawsuit.
And by the way, I should mention that in their time,
in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the women were called dolly's.
That was the nickname for them.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Why.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I don't know, Maybe because they were sort of like,
so those women when we call it, they were like,
oh yeah, yeah, we were, we were the dollies.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Go.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So then we started referring to them as the dollies.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I feel like we should just like take that back
and start referring to ourselves as the dollies.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I mean, it's kind of cute. And the coverage of
that original lawsuit at the time, some of the headlines
were things like hen party at Newsweek, hen Party. For
a certain point, I wanted to reclaim hen party, like,
I love, what is that?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Just a gathering party? Is in England at least it's
a bachelorette party. That's what they call a hen party.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I don't know if that's the use of so why
were they calling it a head But it's also.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Interesting that even the coverage of the sexism article was sexist.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Oh of course, right, like of course, yeah, and so okay,
so how this relates to my book? So one of
the women who would go on to become Newsweek's first
female senior editor. Is Lynn Povich, and if her name
sounds familiar, she wrote a book about that lawsuit a
few years later called The Good Girl's Revolt, And if
(13:05):
that sounds familiar, that book was made into an Amazon series,
a very popular Amazon series that to bring this all
full circle, was then canceled, and in the me Too movement,
it was revealed that it was canceled by a man
who would later be fired for sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Of course it was so.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Let me just take a bath of it. But anyhow,
Lynn Povich, you know, we spent a lot of time
with these women. I became very close with her. She
became a mentor, and she introduced me to her daughter
who was my age and was in this secret feminist group.
And that secret feminist group I would begin meeting with
(13:43):
and I meet with them to this day, and we
would joke that we were like a feminist fight club,
which is the title of my book.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And so you should explain like what it meant to
be in the club, Like it was really about your careers, right,
but also other things.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It was about our careers. We would meet monthly. One
of the members' parents apartments because at that time, you know,
we had these tiny studio apartments. They couldn't fit that
many people. And we would talk about our careers and
we would support each other, and we would talk about
asking for raises, and we would complain about sexism, and
the mentors the dollies would come in and give us
(14:18):
pep talks.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Oh God, I love this so much.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And the reason why we called it a feminist fight
club was because we didn't talk about it outside of
the group. And that sounds kind of crazy now in
twenty twenty three, when like everyone calls themselves a feminists
to the extent that it means, it's almost meaningless in
some cases.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
But also the concept of like women gathering to talk
about work like this is Cheryl Sandberg thing, which actually
you work with Cheryl, Like there's a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Of women's face, yes, But at that time, most of
the people in that group, and so it was journalists,
it was a lot of producers and television writers. There
was a couple of comedians. They felt like if they
told people in their workplaces that they were in this
feminist consciousness raising group, they would be you know, at best, stigmatized,
(15:01):
at worst penalized. Yeah, And so we didn't talk about
the club outside of the club. And so years later,
when I would go on to write my book, which
was a manual for fighting sexism at work, it was
and it is a great gone.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I mean, I do know some of this story just
because I read the book. And also I think it's
such a good book to give people, like when they're
entering the workforce. Like I gave it to my niece
and she read it, and I think she gave it
to friends, Like it's really a way to think about
the world, which you're not, at least for me, I
wasn't really prepared for because I was sort of raised
(15:35):
to think that it was all just like meritocracy, right,
like if I worked hard, I would get ahead. And
then I got into the workforce, and at first I
didn't really notice. But the longer I stayed in, the
more I was like, wait, there are things that aren't
quite adding up here.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And it wasn't as if people would tell you you
can't be a writer like those women of nineteen seventy.
It had gone sort of underground. It was more subtle.
It was like you just won't get as many bylines
and we'll tell you that you're great, but you'll notice it,
and then you'll start to think, like, is this is
it me?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, you just assume it's because you're not doing something.
I mean, I remember I used to say this actually
when I worked at ABC, is that often the boys
or men in my peer group would get selected for things.
And a lot of it had to do with the
fact that people nurture people that they see themselves in
of course, you know. And so all our bosses were
older white men, and they would see themselves and these
(16:29):
young guys and they would give them opportunities, and there
was no one who looked or was like me, And
so you know, in the end, I did end up
having a male mentor who really like helped me in
my career, a couple of them, and only one of
them tried to hit on me. So that's the benefit,
I guess. But I guess the thing is is that,
you know, it was almost like he saw something else
(16:51):
in me that reminded him of himself. There's this very
natural instinct to kind of nurture, and I really, you know,
now that I've run newsrooms, really make an effort not
to do that, right, to try and nurture everyone because
everyone deserves that. But that's not the environment we came
up in.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
No, very much not. And so you know, that's what
the book tried to do. It told the story of
my own feminist fight club, which I still meet with,
and you know, we're a little bit more open about
it's not like as secret as it once was. You
can talk about the club outside of the club.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
But also you never say the names of all of
the fight club in the book, like there are some still.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Secret message right yeah, and there's like some well known members.
I mean that's a really cool thing. It's like we
were all these like assistants, junior journalists, like really struggling,
and we have really built each other up and lifted
each other up in the process. And so the book
tells that story, but it also provides like actual tools
(17:45):
to push back against some of the daily sexism and
bias that we still face.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
All Right, well, I feel like that's a good place
to stop. This wasn't meant to be a book plug,
but I feel like we should just tell everybody about
your book. No I'm doing it, not you, So.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, and we can reclaim the dollies.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Maybe this is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there
a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want
us to explore in a future episode? Email us at
Inretropod at gmail dot com or find us on Instagram
at in retropod.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susi b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attiya is our researcher and
associate producer.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary
Doo and Mike Cosparelli, Sound correction and mastering by Amanda
Rose Smith. We are your hosts Suzie Bannacarum.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers for even more
check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.
Where this story really begins is the place where all
good revelutions begin, which is the ladies.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yes, I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I'm Susie bannakerm.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
This is in Retrospect, where each week we delve into
a cultural moment that shaped us.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Most of the time we'll be diving into the past,
but sometimes there will be a thread we want to
follow up on. This is one of us.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So, jess we released an episode about a famous Newsweek
cover story that declared women over forty were more likely
to be killed by a terrorist than to get married
on it, And to be clear, that's absolutely not the case.
Cover absolutely not true, And if you're listening to this
(00:50):
and you haven't listened to that, you should go check
out that episode. But what we're talking about today is
something that came up kind of tangentially that I want
to ask you more about, which is the fact that
essentially we kind of have the women of Newsweek to
thank for our careers in journalism. So tell me why.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, So this came up in the episode because in
order to understand how that cover story came to be,
you kind of have to understand the history of Newsweek,
and the history of Newsweek involves forty six female staffers
in the year nineteen seventy suing the company for gender
discrimination in the first lawsuit of its kind.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Oh wow, because there were other lawsuits after that, right.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It actually paved the way for many of the other lawsuits.
And essentially, at this time, women were told they could
not be writers at Newsweek.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So they were like, they could just be copygirls, right, you.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Could be a copygirl, you could be a researcher. I
mean effectively they were writing, but they would never get
a byline.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And so when you got hired, you would come in,
you know, they'd be like, whatever, here's your desk, here's
what you're going to be doing. But just so you know,
women don't write here. And they would say it bluntly
like that, and that was I guess okay at the time.
So eventually these women got fed up and they organized.
Seems reasonable, and they filed a lawsuit. And so where
(02:12):
this story really begins is the place where all good
revolutions begin, which is the ladies room. Yes, they began
chatting with each other in the bathroom and talking about
how messed up this was, And so they came together
and they organized, and they hired a woman who was
then a little known civil rights lawyer by the name
(02:34):
of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congress woman and now congresswoman,
and they sued their bosses. And what happened was, after
they sued their bosses, it set off this chain reaction.
So then the women of Time magazine sued, and then
the women of Ladies Home Journal, which like, now we're
like Ladies' home Journal what, but back then was one
of the few places where women, you know, really saw
(02:56):
their stories represented.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But also, sorry, only men wrote for Ladies Home Journal, Like,
that's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So all of the top editors at Ladies Home Journal
were men, and so they actually staged a sit in
in one of the editor's office. They and I think
they like jumped on tables. It was a whole thing.
And same with the New York Times. The New York
Times also sued in the same era. So you know,
in some ways, we actually have these women to thank
for the fact that we are now journalists. I can
(03:24):
of course be writers, like nobody would ever dare say
to us that a woman can't be a writer.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, although I will say one thing that I noticed
when I started working in television is that most of
the staff was female and a lot of the bosses
were still well, that certainly still a thing, and that's
certainly still a thing in a lot of media newsrooms.
I mean, I think obviously I've been in the business
a long time, so things have changed to some I
mean they've changed because I was able to run a newsroom, right,
(03:51):
That in and of itself is progress, But it's not
as much progress as you would hope in some of
these cases. And what's certainly the case is, I know
I've never been paid the same as my male counterparts
of my newsrooms, and I have been well paid. I'm
not complaining, But what's very clear to me is that
I know what comparable men have made in these jobs,
(04:12):
and it's never been, Wow, the same.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, yeah, So how.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Did you come to kind of find this story about Newsweek? Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Right, of course? So okay, the ladies room. That's where
I found myself in the year twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
What a fun parallel with two.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Of my female colleagues, I think you know them, Jesse
Ellison and Sarah Ball complaining as we were writers at
Newsweek about the fact that we felt like we weren't
getting ahead, and you know, we'd come of age and
come up with this class of interns at Newsweek back then,
and we could track essentially how the boys, the men
(04:48):
in that class were getting promoted more quickly than us,
and they were getting more bylines. And I think that,
you know, we started pulling the numbers in that year
all but I think four of the magazine's cover st
of which they were like forty or something, were written
by men. And so we were getting a little bit disgruntled,
and we were meeting in the lady's room to talk
about this. And so one day maybe word had gotten
(05:12):
out or like around friendly faces, you know, people knew that,
like this was an issue. I came back to my
cubicle and there was a book on it that had
been left there by one of our librarians, a man
who was lovely. It was Susan Brown Miller's feminist Classic
In Our Time, which I had not read at the time,
and there was a post it note on a page,
(05:34):
and so I'm like, oh, what is this? I opened
the page.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I love that it feels like very subversive. It does right, and.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So like he like slipped through the book exactly, and
on this page was a chapter about the women of
Newsweek whould sue the magazine for gender discrimination. And I
know this sounds crazy now in twenty twenty three to
think that, like we didn't know this story and it
wasn't googleable, but we did not know this story where
I had no idea that this had happened, and we
(06:00):
had no idea we were working in this very place
where history had been made.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Also, how would you know? It's not like the magazine
would have celebrated this part of its history, right, Like
I'm sure they weren't exactly talking about it.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And it sort of had just been lost to time.
Like once we started asking everyone, people would be like, oh, yeah,
like maybe there was a Supreme Court case, Like there
were all these sort of myths around it, but nobody
had talked about it in so long, and the original
articles covering it were all in like microfeche in the
New York Public Library. So when we frantically went back
(06:32):
to our desks and were like googling what had happened,
we couldn't find anything. Oh my god, that's wild, And
so what happened was, you know, like, as all good
reporters do, we started reporting it out basically in secret,
and did any.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Of your editors? Were there any female editors?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
There were some women editors yet.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
But none of whom were like, you know you felt
like you could go to, because I mean, let's be
fair to women who probably were editors at that time,
like if you made waves, you weren't going to stay
an editor for very long totally.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And so what we started doing is we reported it
in secret, and we found the original women who were
part of the suit. We were like calling them up, but
there are a lot of them still lived in New
York and they, you know, hadn't heard from anyone about it.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
They must have been so happy to get it.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And then we eventually told male editor Mentor, a gay
man who we loved and really trusted, and he sort
of coached us through this because what we wanted to
do was actually publish this story. We wanted it was
coming up on the fortieth anniversary of that lawsuit, and
so we were like, yeah, well let's report it out.
Let's look at what has actually changed, Let's weave our
(07:36):
own stories is discrontled into it, and let's publish it.
But that, of course was controversial.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I mean I can only imagine they must have hated that.
But did you eventually publish it?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yes, So what happened was and you know, this sort
of gets all lost in the chaos of Newsweek when
you would ultimately join it. This was like right before
the magazine was going to be put up for sale.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So wait, this was that close to when I worked in.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
You because when did you start? Twelve?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Maybe twenty ten? Actually twenty now, maybe twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Wait, yes, it was about a year before, about a
year because the anniversary of this lawsuit was in twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, because I sort of like remember this story, but
I don't think I had any idea that it was
so close to the time when I started working there.
I mean that was really recent.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It was pretty recent. Yes, And at the time that
this was happening, you know, there were a number of
complaints at different media institutions about sexism and gender discrimination.
This was also at the time that David Letterman had
that whole thing where he was found to be sleeping
with one of his assistants or his intern or something.
So there was just like pre me too. This was
(08:42):
in the air, and so yeah, what we did was
we reported it in secret for months and months and months,
and we ultimately wrote a draft in secret with this
editor helping us, and then we presented it to the
top editors and the editor in chief, who ultimately recused
him himself from the process.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
John And had he been there at the time of
the lawsuit, No, no, no, no, that's so interesting that
he had to recuse himself because he felt like some
of the complaints were about the current state of Vedews round.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yes, and because we had done all these tallies, we
had looked at bylines, we had looked at the staffing,
and we had put those data points into the piece
and so then it sat there and floated in this
like awkward limbo for a number of months.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, they must have just been like shell shocked, because
I can just imagine being on the other side. You're
like presented with this thing. You can't ignore it, and
you know you're going to take it somewlace else if they.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Don't know this, and we you know, this was really
the only job that the three of us had had.
It was the three of us who had co authored
it together.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
And it's so Baldy so impressive.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Thank you. I mean now now I don't know if
it seems so much, but at the time it did
feel scary. But also we were so fed up that
we were like, all right, fire us, like we don't care,
Like you know, the worst thing that can happen is
we get fired.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
For which actually we know would have been the best
thing that could have happened, because you would have gotten
so much attention for that.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It would be interesting to see if we had then.
But anyway, ultimately they did publish it. It went through so
many rounds of editing. Every single editor in the building
weighed in on it, but we ultimately were really happy
with it, and it was published, and we did this
whole photo shoot where we got those women from the
original lawsuit together.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
We should post that on the Instagram, Oh yeah, we can.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, And then you know, shortly after that, Newsweek got
put up for sale, and it was like any progress
that this had made in that moment was completely forgotten
because we had bigger problems.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Also, I think there was this weird idea that because
Tina Brown was the editor after the sale and because
she was a woman, that somehow that like solved all
the problems.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Tina Brown, for those who don't know, was this famous editor.
She's British, but she had come over to run The
New Yorker and Vanity Fair and had made a huge
name for herself. She writes about the Royals.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, and I mean she.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Had been brought in to run the new Newsweek.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah. I mean what's interesting about it is she is
a feminist by every measure. But I will say that
that newsroom did not feel not sexist to me for
a variety of reasons. Like I remember very clearly that
when I was there, there was a well known writer
who came to town and left for lunch with one
of the assistants and came back, and it was very
(11:20):
obvious to me what had happened at lunch. Okay, you know,
and that was very much scene as just like a thing. Yeah,
that happened in a newsroom. You know.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
You saw me too when this stuff wasn't really talked about.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Okay, So wait, this does somehow connect to your book, though,
So I want you to tell that part of this, Yeah,
of course.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Okay, So we're meeting in the ladies room, we write
this story, we find the women from that original lawsuit.
And by the way, I should mention that in their time,
in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the women were called dolly's.
That was the nickname for them.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Why.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I don't know, Maybe because they were sort of like,
so those women when we call it, they were like,
oh yeah, yeah, we were, we were the dollies.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Go.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So then we started referring to them as the dollies.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I feel like we should just like take that back
and start referring to ourselves as the dollies.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
I mean, it's kind of cute. And the coverage of
that original lawsuit at the time, some of the headlines
were things like hen party at Newsweek, hen Party. For
a certain point, I wanted to reclaim hen party, like,
I love, what is that?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Just a gathering party? Is in England at least it's
a bachelorette party. That's what they call a hen party.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I don't know if that's the use of so why
were they calling it a head But it's also.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Interesting that even the coverage of the sexism article was sexist.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Oh of course, right, like of course, yeah, and so okay,
so how this relates to my book? So one of
the women who would go on to become Newsweek's first
female senior editor. Is Lynn Povich, and if her name
sounds familiar, she wrote a book about that lawsuit a
few years later called The Good Girl's Revolt, And if
(13:05):
that sounds familiar, that book was made into an Amazon series,
a very popular Amazon series that to bring this all
full circle, was then canceled, and in the me Too movement,
it was revealed that it was canceled by a man
who would later be fired for sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Of course it was so.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Let me just take a bath of it. But anyhow,
Lynn Povich, you know, we spent a lot of time
with these women. I became very close with her. She
became a mentor, and she introduced me to her daughter
who was my age and was in this secret feminist group.
And that secret feminist group I would begin meeting with
(13:43):
and I meet with them to this day, and we
would joke that we were like a feminist fight club,
which is the title of my book.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And so you should explain like what it meant to
be in the club, Like it was really about your careers, right,
but also other things.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
It was about our careers. We would meet monthly. One
of the members' parents apartments because at that time, you know,
we had these tiny studio apartments. They couldn't fit that
many people. And we would talk about our careers and
we would support each other, and we would talk about
asking for raises, and we would complain about sexism, and
the mentors the dollies would come in and give us
(14:18):
pep talks.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Oh God, I love this so much.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And the reason why we called it a feminist fight
club was because we didn't talk about it outside of
the group. And that sounds kind of crazy now in
twenty twenty three, when like everyone calls themselves a feminists
to the extent that it means, it's almost meaningless in
some cases.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
But also the concept of like women gathering to talk
about work like this is Cheryl Sandberg thing, which actually
you work with Cheryl, Like there's a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Of women's face, yes, But at that time, most of
the people in that group, and so it was journalists,
it was a lot of producers and television writers. There
was a couple of comedians. They felt like if they
told people in their workplaces that they were in this
feminist consciousness raising group, they would be you know, at best, stigmatized,
(15:01):
at worst penalized. Yeah, And so we didn't talk about
the club outside of the club. And so years later,
when I would go on to write my book, which
was a manual for fighting sexism at work, it was
and it is a great gone.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I mean, I do know some of this story just
because I read the book. And also I think it's
such a good book to give people, like when they're
entering the workforce. Like I gave it to my niece
and she read it, and I think she gave it
to friends, Like it's really a way to think about
the world, which you're not, at least for me, I
wasn't really prepared for because I was sort of raised
(15:35):
to think that it was all just like meritocracy, right,
like if I worked hard, I would get ahead. And
then I got into the workforce, and at first I
didn't really notice. But the longer I stayed in, the
more I was like, wait, there are things that aren't
quite adding up here.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And it wasn't as if people would tell you you
can't be a writer like those women of nineteen seventy.
It had gone sort of underground. It was more subtle.
It was like you just won't get as many bylines
and we'll tell you that you're great, but you'll notice it,
and then you'll start to think, like, is this is
it me?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, you just assume it's because you're not doing something.
I mean, I remember I used to say this actually
when I worked at ABC, is that often the boys
or men in my peer group would get selected for things.
And a lot of it had to do with the
fact that people nurture people that they see themselves in
of course, you know. And so all our bosses were
older white men, and they would see themselves and these
(16:29):
young guys and they would give them opportunities, and there
was no one who looked or was like me, And
so you know, in the end, I did end up
having a male mentor who really like helped me in
my career, a couple of them, and only one of
them tried to hit on me. So that's the benefit,
I guess. But I guess the thing is is that,
you know, it was almost like he saw something else
(16:51):
in me that reminded him of himself. There's this very
natural instinct to kind of nurture, and I really, you know,
now that I've run newsrooms, really make an effort not
to do that, right, to try and nurture everyone because
everyone deserves that. But that's not the environment we came
up in.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
No, very much not. And so you know, that's what
the book tried to do. It told the story of
my own feminist fight club, which I still meet with,
and you know, we're a little bit more open about
it's not like as secret as it once was. You
can talk about the club outside of the club.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
But also you never say the names of all of
the fight club in the book, like there are some still.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Secret message right yeah, and there's like some well known members.
I mean that's a really cool thing. It's like we
were all these like assistants, junior journalists, like really struggling,
and we have really built each other up and lifted
each other up in the process. And so the book
tells that story, but it also provides like actual tools
(17:45):
to push back against some of the daily sexism and
bias that we still face.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
All Right, well, I feel like that's a good place
to stop. This wasn't meant to be a book plug,
but I feel like we should just tell everybody about
your book. No I'm doing it, not you, So.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, and we can reclaim the dollies.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Maybe this is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there
a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want
us to explore in a future episode? Email us at
Inretropod at gmail dot com or find us on Instagram
at in retropod.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susi b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attiya is our researcher and
associate producer.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary
Doo and Mike Cosparelli, Sound correction and mastering by Amanda
Rose Smith. We are your hosts Suzie Bannacarum.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers for even more
check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.
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