In Retrospect - Episode 16

EPISODE 16 – WHEN THE ‘GOOD GIRLS’ REVOLTED

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Jessica Bennett:

Where this story really begins is the place where all good revolutions begin, which is the ladies room.

Susie Banikarim:

Yes.

Jessica Bennett:

I’m Jessica Bennett.

Susie Banikarim:

And I’m Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett:

This is In Retrospect where each week we delve into a cultural moment that shaped us.

Susie Banikarim:

And that we just can’t stop thinking about.

Jessica Bennett:

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 those.

Susie Banikarim:

So Jess, we released an episode about a famous Newsweek cover story that declared women over 40 were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married. And to be clear, that’s absolutely not the case-

Jessica Bennett:

As we uncover.

Susie Banikarim:

… Absolutely not true. And if you’re listening to this 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 tangentially that I want to ask you more about-

Jessica Bennett:

Sure.

Susie Banikarim:

… which is the fact that essentially we have the women of Newsweek to thank for our careers in journalism. So tell me why.

Jessica Bennett:

Yes. So this came up in the episode because in order to understand how that cover story came to be, you have to understand the history of Newsweek and the history of Newsweek involves 46 female staffers in the year 1970 suing the company for gender discrimination in the first lawsuit of its kind.

Susie Banikarim:

Oh, wow. Because there were other lawsuits after that, right? I do know that-

Jessica Bennett:

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. So-

Susie Banikarim:

Right. They were, they could just be copy girls. Right?

Jessica Bennett:

Well, you could be a copy girl, you could be a researcher. I mean, effectively they were writing, but they would never get a byline-

Susie Banikarim:

Oh, God. That’s so crazy-

Jessica Bennett:

… And so when you got hired, you would come in, 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-

Susie Banikarim:

Seems reasonable.

Jessica Bennett:

… and they filed a lawsuit. And so where this story really begins is the place where all good revolutions begin, which is the ladies’ room.

Susie Banikarim:

Yes.

Jessica Bennett:

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 of Eleanor Holmes Norton-

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God.

Jessica Bennett:

The congresswoman, the now congresswoman-

Susie Banikarim:

Yes, of course. Yeah.

Jessica Bennett:

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 now we’re like, “Ladies’ Home Journal what?” But back then was one of few places where women really saw their stories represented-

Susie Banikarim:

But also, sorry, only men wrote for Ladies’ Home Journal? That’s so crazy.

Jessica Bennett:

So all of the top editors at Ladies’ Home Journal were men-

Susie Banikarim:

Were men, of course.

Jessica Bennett:

… and so they actually staged a sit-in one of the editor’s office, and I think they jumped on tables. It was a whole thing. And same with the New York Times. The New York Times also sued in this same era. So in some ways, we actually have these women to thank for the fact that we are now journalists. I can, of course, be a writer. It’s like nobody would ever dare say to us that a woman can’t be a writer.

Susie Banikarim:

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 male-

Jessica Bennett:

Well, that’s certainly still a thing-

Susie Banikarim:

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. 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 who have run 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, and it’s never been the same-

Jessica Bennett:

Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Susie Banikarim:

So how did you come to find this story about Newsweek?

Jessica Bennett:

Oh, right, of course. So okay, the ladies’ room. That’s where I found myself in the year 2010.

Susie Banikarim:

What a fun parallel.

Jessica Bennett:

With two 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 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 in that class were getting promoted more quickly than us, and they were getting more bylines. And I think that we started pulling the numbers in that year, all but I think four of the magazine’s cover stories of which there were 40 or something were written by men.

And so we were getting a little bit disgruntled, and we were meeting in the ladies’ room to talk about this. And so one day, maybe word had gotten out or around friendly faces, people knew that 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 Brownmiller’s feminist classic In Our Time, which I had not read at the time. And there was a post-it note on a page. And so I’m like, “Oh, what is this?” I open the page and-

Susie Banikarim:

I love that it feels very subversive.

Jessica Bennett:

It does, right? And so-

Susie Banikarim:

It’s like he slipped you the book.

Jessica Bennett:

Exactly. And on this page was a chapter about the women of Newsweek who had sued the magazine for gender discrimination. And I know this sounds crazy now in 2023 to think that we didn’t know this story and it wasn’t Google-able, but we did not know this story. We had no idea that this had happened. We had no idea we were working in this very place where history had been made-

Susie Banikarim:

Well, and also how would you know? It’s not like the magazine would’ve celebrated this part of its history, right? I’m sure they weren’t exactly talking about it-

Jessica Bennett:

And it had just been lost to time. Once we started asking everyone, people would be like, “Oh, yeah. Maybe there was a Supreme Court case.” There were all these myths around it, but nobody had talked about it in so long. And the original articles covering it were all in microfiche in the New York Public Library. So when we frantically went back to our desks and were Googling what had happened, we couldn’t find anything.

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God. That’s wild.

Jessica Bennett:

And so what happened was, as all good reporters do, we started reporting it out basically in secret. And so-

Susie Banikarim:

Did any of your editors… Were there any female editors?

Jessica Bennett:

There were some women editors, yes.

Susie Banikarim:

But none of whom were you felt like you could go to? Because I mean, let’s be fair to women who probably were editors at that time, if you made waves, you weren’t going to stay an editor for very long.

Jessica Bennett:

Totally. 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 calling them up at their homes-

Susie Banikarim:

That’s amazing.

Jessica Bennett:

… A lot of them still lived in New York, and they hadn’t heard from anyone about this in-

Susie Banikarim:

They must have been so happy to hear from you-

Jessica Bennett:

… decades. And then we eventually told a male editor mentor, a gay man who we-

Susie Banikarim:

Of course.

Jessica Bennett:

… loved and really trusted, and he coached us through this because what we wanted to do was actually publish this story. It was coming up on the 40th anniversary of that lawsuit-

Susie Banikarim:

Genius.

Jessica Bennett:

… And so we were like, “Yeah, well, let’s report it out. Let’s look at what has actually changed. Let’s weave our own stories of-“

Susie Banikarim:

So smart.

Jessica Bennett:

… “feeling disgruntled into it and let’s publish it.” But that, of course, was controversial.

Susie Banikarim:

I mean, I can only imagine. They must’ve hated that. But did you eventually publish it?

Jessica Bennett:

Yes. So what happened was, and this gets all lost in the chaos of Newsweek when you would ultimately join it. This was right before the magazine was going to be put up for sale. So-

Susie Banikarim:

Wait. This was that close to when I worked in Newsweek?

Jessica Bennett:

Because when did you start? 2012 maybe-

Susie Banikarim:

Oh God, I want to say 2010 actually. Or 20-

Jessica Bennett:

2010-

Susie Banikarim:

… No, maybe 2012, something around then-

Jessica Bennett:

Anyway, yes. It was about a year before.

Susie Banikarim:

Oh wow. I didn’t realize it was so close.

Jessica Bennett:

… It was about a year before, because the anniversary of this lawsuit was in 2010.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah because I 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.

Jessica Bennett:

It was pretty recent, yes.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett:

And at the time that this was happening, 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 pre Me Too, this was 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-

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God.

Jessica Bennett:

… with this editor helping us. And then we presented it to the top editors and the editor in chief, who ultimately recused himself from the process-

Susie Banikarim:

Who was the editor in chief?

Jessica Bennett:

Jon Meacham.

Susie Banikarim:

And had he been there at the time of the lawsuit?

Jessica Bennett:

No, no, no, no. He was much-

Susie Banikarim:

But that’s so interesting that he had to recuse himself because he felt like some of the complaints were about the current state of the newsroom?

Jessica Bennett:

Yes. And because we had done all these tallies, we had looked at bylines, we had looked at staffing, and we had put those data points into the piece. And so then it sat there and floated in this awkward limbo-

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God.

Jessica Bennett:

… for a number of months.

Susie Banikarim:

Well, they must have just been shellshocked because I can just imagine being on the other side. You’re presented with this thing, you can’t ignore it-

Jessica Bennett:

Right, right. You can’t ignore it.

Susie Banikarim:

… and you know you’re going to take it someplace else if they don’t publish it, which is worst.

Jessica Bennett:

Well, that was the thing. And 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. And-

Susie Banikarim:

It’s so ballsy. It’s so impressive.

Jessica Bennett:

Thank you. I mean, now I don’t know if it seems so much, but at the time it did feel scary, but also-

Susie Banikarim:

It feels that way to me.

Jessica Bennett:

… we were so fed up that we were like, “All right, fire us. We don’t care.” The worst thing that can happen is we get fired for this-

Susie Banikarim:

Which actually now we know would’ve been the best thing that could have happened because you would have gotten so much attention for that- [inaudible 00:10:05].

Jessica Bennett:

No, 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-

Susie Banikarim:

I can imagine.

Jessica Bennett:

… 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-

Susie Banikarim:

Oh, I love that. We should post that on the Instagram.

Jessica Bennett:

Oh, yeah. We can.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett:

And then 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.

Susie Banikarim:

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 solved all the problems.

Jessica Bennett:

And 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, and she had been brought in to run the new Newsweek.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah. I mean, what’s interesting about Tina 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. 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 obvious to me what had happened at lunch. And that was very much seen as just a thing that happened in a newsroom. And [inaudible 00:11:28].

Jessica Bennett:

Well, this was all pre Me Too, when this stuff wasn’t really talked about.

Susie Banikarim:

Okay, so wait. This does somehow connect to your book, though. So I want you to tell that part of the story.

Jessica Bennett:

Oh, yeah, of course.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett:

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 1960s and ’70s, the women were called dollies. That was-

Susie Banikarim:

I’m sorry.

Jessica Bennett:

… the nickname for them.

Susie Banikarim:

Why?

Jessica Bennett:

I don’t know, maybe because they were like doll, little dolls-

Susie Banikarim:

Like little dolls. Oh my God, that’s so upsetting.

Jessica Bennett:

So those women, when we caught, they were like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were the dollies.”

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God.

Jessica Bennett:

So then we started referring to them as the dollies.

Susie Banikarim:

I feel like we should just take that back and start referring to ourselves as the dollies-

Jessica Bennett:

The dollies.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah.

Jessica Bennett:

I mean, it’s cute-

Susie Banikarim:

It’s amazing.

Jessica Bennett:

… And the coverage of that original lawsuit at the time, some of the headlines were things like “Hen Party at Newsweek.”

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God.

Jessica Bennett:

A hen party.

Susie Banikarim:

[inaudible 00:12:28].

Jessica Bennett:

For a certain point, I wanted to reclaim hen party. What is that, just a gathering of women causing trouble?

Susie Banikarim:

No, so a hen party is, in England at least, it’s a bachelorette party.

Jessica Bennett:

Oh, okay.

Susie Banikarim:

That’s what they call a hen party. I don’t know if that’s the use they were using there.

Jessica Bennett:

So why were they calling it a hen? Anyway-

Susie Banikarim:

But it’s also just interesting that even the coverage of the sexism article was sexist.

Jessica Bennett:

Oh, of course.

Susie Banikarim:

Right? Of course.

Jessica Bennett:

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 Girls Revolt. And if 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.

Susie Banikarim:

Of course it was. It’s like…

Jessica Bennett:

So let me just take a breath. But anyhow, Lynn Povich, 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, and I meet with them to this day. And we would joke that we were a feminist fight club, which is the title of my book. And so it was-

Susie Banikarim:

You should explain what it meant to be in the club. It was really about your careers, but also other things.

Jessica Bennett:

Yeah. It was about our careers. We would meet monthly in one of the members’ parents’ apartments because at that time, we had these tiny-

Susie Banikarim:

Apartments.

Jessica Bennett:

… studio apartments that 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 pep talks.

Susie Banikarim:

Oh my God, I love this so much.

Jessica Bennett:

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 crazy now in 2023 when everyone calls themselves a feminist to the extent-

Susie Banikarim:

This or that, yeah.

Jessica Bennett:

… that it’s almost meaningless in some cases. But-

Susie Banikarim:

Well, also the concept of women gathering to talk about work. There’s a Sheryl Sandberg thing, which actually you worked with Sheryl. There’s a lot of those-

Jessica Bennett:

Women’s spaces. Yes.

Susie Banikarim:

… spaces now.

Jessica Bennett:

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 at best stigmatized, at worst, penalized.

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah. Of course.

Jessica Bennett:

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 playing on-

Susie Banikarim:

Yeah. And it is a great book. 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 when they’re entering the workforce. I gave it to my niece and she read it, and I think she gave it to friends. 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 raised to think that it was all just meritocracy. 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.”

Jessica Bennett:

Yes. And it wasn’t as if people would tell you, “You can’t be a writer” like those women of 1970. It had gone 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, “Is this me?”

Susie Banikarim:

Is it me? 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.

Jessica Bennett:

Of course.

Susie Banikarim:

And so all our bosses were older white men, and they would see themselves in these young guys, and they would give them opportunities. And there was no one who looked or was like me. And so in the end, I did end up having a male mentor who really helped me in my career, a couple of them. And only one of them tried to hit on me. So that’s a benefit, I guess. But I guess the thing is, is that it was almost like he saw something else in me that reminded him of himself. There’s this very natural instinct to nurture. And I really, now that I’ve run newsrooms, really make an effort not to do that, to really try and nurture everyone because everyone deserves that. But that’s not the environment we came up in.

Jessica Bennett:

No, very much not. And so that’s what the book tried to do, told the story of my own feminist fight club, which I still meet with and we’re a little bit more open about it. It’s not as secret as it once was. You can talk about the club outside of the club.

Susie Banikarim:

But also you never say the names of all of the fight club in the book. There are some still secret members, right-

Jessica Bennett:

Yeah, no. That’s it. Yeah. And there’s some well-known members. I mean, that’s a really cool thing. It’s like we were all these assistants, junior journalists 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 actual tools to push back against some of the daily sexism and bias that we still face.

Susie Banikarim:

All right. Well, I feel like that’s a good place to stop.

Jessica Bennett:

Yeah.

Susie Banikarim:

This wasn’t meant to be a book plug, but I feel like we should just tell everyone to go buy your book.

Jessica Bennett:

Yeah, sorry.

Susie Banikarim:

No, I’m doing it, not you. So…

Jessica Bennett:

Yeah, and we can reclaim the dollies maybe.

Susie Banikarim:

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 [email protected] or find us on Instagram @inretropod.

Jessica Bennett:

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.

Susie Banikarim:

You can also find us on Instagram @jessicabennett and @susiebnyc. Also check out Jessica’s books, Feminist Fight Club and This is 18.

Jessica Bennett:

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart podcast and The Meteor. Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derrick Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.

Susie Banikarim:

Our executive producer from The Meteor is Cindi Leive. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stumpf and Katrina Norvell. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Dooe and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts, Susie Banikarim.

Jessica Bennett:

And Jessica Bennett. We’re also executive producers. For even more, check out inretropod.com. See you next week.