Newsweek covers sexism at Newsweek: summing up today's news

In a bold, must-read story for women in the media, Newsweek writers Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison, and Sarah Ball call out Newsweek for its past and present sexist treatment of female employees. The story details the 1970 lawsuit that 46 women staffers filed against the company for relegating them to secretarial roles while the men got the bylines. Things have changed since then, Bennett, Ellison, and Ball write. But, have things really changed?

"In countless small ways, each of us has felt frustrated over the years, as if something was amiss. But as products of a system in which we learned that the fight for equality had been won, we didn't identify those feelings as gender-related. It seemed like a cop-out, a weakness, to suggest that the problem was anybody's fault but our own."

The writers note that in 1970, Newsweek's editorial masthead was 25 percent female. But now, women make up 39 percent.

"No one would dare say today that 'women don't write here,' as the Newsweek women were told 40 years ago. But men wrote all but six of Newsweek's 49 cover stories last year—and two of those used the headline 'The Thinking Man.'"

Mediaite's Glynnis MacNicol speculates that the Newsweek article may restart a national conversation about sexism. "I suspect if you are over the age of 30 none of this will strike you as terribly shocking. It does make me wonder however, if now that the country has adjusted to the President, passed health care, and got over the shock of the economy, whether this signifies we are ready to return the conversation that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy reignited back in the spring of 2008. Namely, wow, is sexism ever not dead."

And Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory congratulates the writers, saying "you go, women" while finally, after years of silence, telling her own story of a lecherous college newspaper editor "who would build me up and then tear me to shreds, over and over, like an emotionally abusive boyfriend...At the time, I went to my journalism professor for advice -- but omitted my close-encounters with [his] crotch-rubbing out of embarrassment -- and she told me plainly that some men take "delight in putting a young, bright, attractive woman 'in her place'" and warned: 'Take a lesson from this -- it won't be the last time.'"

How true. You can read about my experiences here. -TLF