Award-winning journalist Lynn Povich is one of 46 women who organized and filed a lawsuit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1970, citing discrimination against women in hiring and promotion. More than 30 years later, the first promoted female senior editor of Newsweek writes of the experience in her book, “The Good Girls Revolt.”
“We would actually go in to the ladies room. Look under the stalls, see who was there, and if no one else was there, we’d approach someone at the sink and say, ‘You know I have to check a story by this guy and it’s terrible, or I could do it better,’ and if they responded, we’d say, ‘We’re thinking of doing something to change this,’" Povich says of organizing women at Newsweek to file the complaint. "And then we would start reeling people in one by one.”
For Povich, there has been “enormous progress” for women seeking jobs in the media industry and in corporations since 1970. However, there are "still very few women at the top" in the media industry and in corporations, she says. In Newsweek, for example, only 43 of 49 cover stories published in 2009 were written by men.
“I do think that there's still an imbalance," Povich argues. "I think also that women need to push themselves more... It’s a question about how much is discrimination and how much do women still need to have the confidence to go forward, because they certainly have the skill and they certainly have the talent.”