Following this week’s news about the firing of Jill Abramson from the New York Times and the discussion of gender pay disparity, here’s some historical context: The full opening chapter of Lynn Povich’s book, The Good Girls Revolt, about the first female class action lawsuit against Newsweek. Thanks to Povich and PublicAffairs for allowing us to reprint the excerpt.
The Good Girls Revolt: When 46 Women Sued Newsweek for Discrimination
The Good Girls Revolt

Lynn Povich | The Good Girls Revolt, Public Affairs | 2012 | 14 minutes (3,368 words)
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“Editors File Story; Girls File Complaint”
On March 16, 1970, Newsweek magazine hit the newsstands with a cover story on the fledgling feminist movement titled “Women in Revolt.” The bright yellow cover pictured a naked woman in red silhouette, her head thrown back, provocatively thrusting her fist through a broken blue female-sex symbol. As the first copies went on sale that Monday morning, forty-six female employees of Newsweek announced that we, too, were in revolt. We had just filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charging that we had been “systematically discriminated against in both hiring and promotion and forced to assume a subsidiary role” simply because we were women. It was the first time women in the media had sued on the grounds of sex discrimination and the story, irresistibly timed to the Newsweek cover, was picked up around the world:
• “‘Discriminate,’ le redattrici di Newsweek?” (La Stampa) “Newsweek’s Sex Revolt” (London Times)
• “Editors File Story; Girls File Complaint” (Newsday)
• “Women Get Set for Battle” (London Daily Express)
• “As Newsweek Says, Women Are in Revolt, Even on Newsweek” (New York Times)
The story in the New York Daily News, titled “Newshens Sue Newsweek for ‘Equal Rights,’” began, “Forty-six women on the staff of Newsweek magazine, most of them young and most of them pretty, announced today they were suing the magazine.”
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