Lynn Povich > Quotes

“We were women in transition, raised in one era and coming of age in another, very different time...here we were, entering the workplace in the 1960s questioning--and often rejecting--many of the values we had been taught. We were the polite, perfectionist "good girls," who never showed our drive or our desires around men. Now we were becoming mad women, discovering and confronting our own ambitions, a quality praised in men but stigmatized--still--in women.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“I quickly realized that I enjoyed editing more than writing. I felt more suited to it and it fit my nurturing personality. I had lots of ideas and a strong sense of structure, and I enjoyed working with talented writers, relishing the give-and-take in making their work better.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“What led to our revolt? Why did our generation suddenly realize that our place in society was changing--and had to change? In part, we were carried by the social and political currents of our time...But even with the social winds in our sails and the women's movement behind us, each of us had to overcome deeply held values and traditional social strictures. The struggle was personally painful and professionally scary. What would happen to us? Would we win our case? Would we change the magazine? Or would we be punished? Who would succeed and who would not? And if our revolt failed, were our careers over--or were they over anyway? We knew that filing the suit legally protected us from being fired, but we didn't trust the editors not to find some way to do us in.

Whatever happened, the immediate result is that it put us all on the line. "The night after the press conference I realized there was no turning back," said Lucy Howard. "Once I stepped up and said I wanted to be a writer, it was over. I wanted to change Newsweek, but everything was going to change.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“For every man there was an inferior woman, for every writer there was a checker," said Nora Ephron. "they were the artists and we were the drones.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Trish had qualms about joining the women and talked it over with Mary Pleshette. "I don't know about this whole business of women being in men's jobs," she confessed to Mary. "I like the differences between men and women and I think we should keep them." Mary asked her which differences she was afraid of losing. Trish didn't answer for a long time. "Oh well," she finally said, "we'll still be women--we'll just have better jobs.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Recognizing that sexism still exists, they said, “is one of the challenges of the new generation.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“We have learned that the enemy is us—our own lack of self-confidence,”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Part of what is involved in participating in cultural change is violating what you were raised to believe was sacrosanct,” she said. “It is getting yourself to accept a different set of values and relinquish old ones.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Being female was not something that ever held Jessica back. “I was used to getting everything I wanted and working hard for it,” said the twenty-eight-year-old writer at Newsweek.com, “so my feeling was, why do I need feminism?”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“There were elements of Mad Men at Newsweek, except that unlike the natty advertising types, journalists were notorious slobs and our two- and three-martini lunches were out of the office, not in...Kevin Buckley, who was hired in 1963, described the Newsweek of the early 1960s as similar to an old movie, with the wisecracking private eye and his Girl Friday. "The 'hubba-hubba' climate was tolerated," he recalled. "I was told the editors would ask the girls to do handstands on their desk. Was there rancor? Yes. But in this climate, a laugh would follow.”
― Lynn Povich

“The women who fought those fights were not the ones who got the rewards. People like me, who came right behind them, got the good jobs and promotions. I know many of the heroines of those battles and they aren’t bitter. They’re still very ticked off at their former employers, but they’re very happy and proud of the women who came after and got the opportunities that rightfully should have been theirs. To me that’s the definition of a great heart.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“...at Newsweek only girls with college degrees--and we were called "girls" then--were hired to sort and deliver the mail, humbly pushing our carts from door to door in our ladylike frocks and proper high-heeled shoes. If we could manage that, we graduated to "clippers," another female ghetto. Dressed in drab khaki smocks so that ink wouldn't smudge our clothes, we sat at the clip desk, marked up newspapers, tore out releveant articles with razor-edged "rip sticks," and routed the clips to the appropriate departments. "Being a clipper was a horrible job," said writer and director Nora Ephron, who got a job at Newsweek after she graduated from Wellesley in 1962, "and to make matters worse, I was good at it.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“We don’t raise our daughters to be as ambitious as our sons,” she said. One reason, she noted, was that “success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. As a man gets more powerful and successful, he is better liked. As a woman gets more powerful and successful, she is less liked.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“The workplace is designed around the male life cycle and there is no allowance for children and family. There’s a fragile new cultural ideal—that both the husband and wife work.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Perhaps most important for women’s advancement, there still is no private or public support for working families, who rely primarily on mothers to care for the children.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Free and accessible child care has always been a fundamental demand of the women’s movement, but the legislative efforts to pass such measures have failed. “Everything that our generation asked for as feminists was getting the identical things of what boys had—access to the Ivy League or professional schools or corporate America,” said psychiatrist Anna Fels. “Women now are up against a much deeper structural problem. The workplace is designed around the male life cycle and there is no allowance for children and family. There’s a fragile new cultural ideal—that both the husband and wife work. But when these families are under the real pressure of having a baby or two, there’s a collapse back to old cultural norms and these young parents go back to the default tradition.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“the women questioned how much had actually changed for women since 1970, not only at the magazine but in the workplace in general. They cited statistics showing that full-time working women who haven’t had children still make seventy-seven cents on the male dollar and that in their first job out of business school, female MBAs make $4,600 less per year than male MBAs.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“I was a good girl," she said. "I learned something about the world and found the courage not to be a good girl.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“In early 1970, Newsweek's editors decided that the new women's liberation movement deserved a cover story. There was one problem, however: there were no women to write the piece.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Mike Ruby, a writer in the magazine’s Business section, used to call Newsweek writing f—k-style journalism: Flash (the lead), Understanding (the billboard—why is this story important), Clarification (tell the details of the story), and Kicker (bringing it all together with a clever ending).”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Newsweek never hired women as writers and only one or two female staffers were promoted to that rank no matter how talented they were...Any aspiring journalist who was interviewed for a job was told, "If you want to be a writer, go somewhere else--women don't write at Newsweek.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“As they see their friends having babies, these young women also worry about how to balance work and family. “The idea of being able to ‘have it all’ is still prevalent,” said Sarah Ball, who left Newsweek in the fall of 2010 to work for Vanityfair.com. “It’s become easier because you can work remotely, but it still eats at your core. It’s what a lot of my friends talk about.” Free”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“In 1971, Congress had approved the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have provided child care on a sliding fee scale to working parents as a matter of right. However, President Richard Nixon vetoed it, saying it would commit “the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to childrearing over against [sic] the family-centered approach.” At the same time, the mainstream media were spreading the feminist message in the public arena.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“For every man there was an inferior woman, for every writer there was a checker,” said Nora Ephron.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“It has always been easy to dismiss substance out of dislike for style.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“When Newsweek owner Katharine Graham heard about our lawsuit, she asked, “Which side am I supposed to be on?”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“You had to be charming and witty and not cringe at their dirty jokes. It was a Mad Men kind of atmosphere.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“But many of the injustices that young women face today are the same ones we fought against forty years ago. The discrimination may be subtler, but sexist attitudes still exist. Jessica, Jesse, and Sarah, and”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“movement behind us, each of us had to overcome deeply held values and traditional social strictures. The struggle was personally painful and”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace

“Protected by the Pill, women felt as sexually entitled as the men, and our short skirts and sometimes braless tops only added to the boil.”
― Lynn Povich, The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace