If you all haven’t caught on, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the show Good Girls Revolt (#savegoodgirlsrevolt, am I right?) So naturally, when given the responsibility of choosing this month’s book club book, I chose the book that inspired the show.
Lynn Povich, one of the women actively involved in filing the first class-action complaint against Newsweek magazine for discrimination in firing and promotion, was inspired to document the case and her involvement in it after being approached by 2 young female employees of Newsweek. They were writing a piece on the treatment of women in the workplace — nearly forty years after Lynn and her colleagues’ case, which battled the exact same thing.
The book walks through the entirety of the case, painting a picture of what experiences pushed the women to file the complaint, and explaining how patient and strong the women had to be to get the magazine’s executives to agree to any sort of change. If you are at all interested women’s rights, efforts towards equal opportunity in the workplace, or just love a good girl boss story — I highly suggest this book. It might shock you how extreme things used to be for women in the workplace, but also will call out how much work is left to do.
xx,
H
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