Newsweek And Sexism
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Posted by Echidne of the Snakes March 22nd, 2010 |
Picture from here.
An interesting piece by several women who work at Newsweek discusses the progress of women at the magazine since the early 1970s. They begin:
They were an archetype: independent, determined young graduates of Seven Sisters colleges, fresh-faced, new to the big city, full of aspiration. Privately, they burned with the kind of ambition that New York encourages so well. Yet they were told in job interviews that women could never get to the top, or even the middle. They accepted positions anyway—sorting mail, collecting newspaper clippings, delivering coffee. Clad in short skirts and dark-rimmed glasses, they’d click around in heels, currying favor with the all-male management, smiling softly when the bosses called them “dollies.” That’s just the way the world worked then. Though each quietly believed she’d be the one to break through, ambition, in any real sense, wasn’t something a woman could talk about out loud. But by 1969, as the women’s movement gathered force around them, the dollies got restless. They began meeting in secret, whispering in the ladies’ room or huddling around a colleague’s desk. To talk freely they’d head to the Women’s Exchange, a 19th-century relic where they could chat discreetly on their lunch break. At first there were just three, then nine, then ultimately 46—women who would become the first group of media professionals to sue for employment discrimination based on gender under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Their employer was NEWSWEEK magazine.
What comes then? This:
Until six months ago, when sex- and gender-discrimination scandals hit ESPN, David Letterman’s Late Show, and the New York Post, the three of us—all young NEWSWEEK writers—knew virtually nothing of these women’s struggle.…
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.
…
Yet the more we talked to our friends and colleagues, the more we heard the same stories of disillusionment, regardless of profession. 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.” In 1970, 25 percent of NEWSWEEK’s editorial masthead was female; today that number is 39 percent. Better? Yes. But it’s hardly equality. (Overall, 49 percent of the entire company, the business and editorial sides, is female.) “Contemporary young women enter the workplace full of enthusiasm, only to see their hopes dashed,” says historian Barbara J. Berg. “Because for the first time they’re slammed up against gender bias.”
…
We know what you’re thinking: we’re young and entitled, whiny and humorless—to use a single, dirty word, feminists!
…
Somewhere along the road to equality, young women like us lost their voices. So when we marched into the workforce and the fog of subtle gender discrimination, it was baffling and alien. Without a movement behind us, we had neither the language to describe it nor the confidence to call it what it was.
The whole article is important to read. What I wanted to do above was to summarize the very common story of how lots of women view feminism: The old fight was won and everything is perfect now. If it isn’t perfect it’s most likely you yourself who is at fault. And somehow the history got erased again, oops! Pointing out sexism makes you whiny and humorless, too, and everybody in this world has problems more important than yours.
Mmm. I should point out that the above paragraph is not written with sarcasm but with empathy and understanding. All of that has to do with the past victories, in a twisted way, especially in the area of jobs.
Outside the question of sexuality, the culture now does tell younger women that they can be anything they want if they work hard enough, though this suggestion is made before one enters the labor force or has any children. I suspect that the transition from college to the labor force is when some women hear that feminist alarm clock ringing. And ringing and ringing. It’s ringing, because the job of making the world a fairer place was only begun and not finished.
But part of that odd rewriting of the history has always been the idea that all the necessary changes were successfully completed about forty years ago. Done! Old hat! This despite the millennia of gender-based laws and traditions!
Likewise, the history of gender tends to be scrubbed far too clean. Thus, we learn that “women were given the vote” in whatever year a particular country decided to kindly do so with not much on the women who were force-fed in prisons or threw themselves in front of horses for the cause of suffrage. To address those aspects of the history automatically introduces the fact that the vote was won against an opposition. And what did the opposition say? Did they just disappear completely, the way they do from official history? To this day the Ann Coulters of this world suggest that women shouldn’t have a vote.
The point is that if the Second Wave of feminism won a few victories it certainly didn’t kill all the seeds of sexism in the society. Why are so many writers drawing that corollary?
Enough of that. What IS the sexism these writers are talking about? It’s not the obvious kind of being told that you can’t be a writer because you are a woman. It looks much more of the “planet of the guys” type or “invisible women” type. Hence the magazine cover about “a thinking man”, twice. Both men and women can be oblivious when it comes to the status of women as half of humankind.
Kudos to Newsweek for publishing an article critical of Newsweek.
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Cross-posted on my blog Echidne of the snakes.
March 23rd, 2010 02:28
I have never considered myself a “feminist” because there is such a negative connotation to that word in our society. I have been subjected to discrimination in my own church’s ordination process and in the parishes I have served over 25 years and much of it was by women. Some of them were women who wanted to be doing what I was doing and couldn’t because of family responsibilities or just because they were afraid to take the leap of faith necessary.
Some of them were women who honestly believed that they - and I - were not meant to have spiritual authority over men and some were women who just couldn’t break away from the age-old tradition of an all-male clergy.
I didn’t have much patience with the “jealous” ones or even with the traditionalists who couldn’t see past “the past.” They seemed to me to be the “unfaithful” ones who placed their faith in tradition instead of God.
I did empathize (and still do) with those who honestly believed that God intended for men to be in positions of spiritual authority, although I certainly do not agree with that view. For several years after I was ordained, I felt “out of place” in clergy garb and in the “holy places” in the church. I recall looking down at my own vestments as I waited for a service to begin and thinking “Whoo-ee, this is weird looking!” I had my own “demons” to defeat.
So, I am no stranger to discrimination based on my gender. I am also no stranger to God’s love and support as together we journeyed through the alligator-infested swamp of the church in the 1980’s. And, I’m happy to say, we made it! We didn’t defeat all of the beasts - there are still some who will not recognize my priesthood as legitimate. We tamed a lot of them, though, without making them feel like the swamp was not their home anymore.
We also made friends with those who would put aside their anger and let go of their hold on the swamp as “no woman’s land.” We did all that as a team - God and I - but not because I had a right to be in the swamp. We did it because God needed me in the swamp to minister to the hurting and to remind them all how much God loved them. We did it because they all needed me to be there with the message that God was also there, even when it seemed that God was far away - on the frozen tundra or the highest mountain.
So, while I suppose it is comforting to know that there were those who blazed the trail for me and that there are still those who will fight for my right to follow the same trail, I was and still am, what I would call a “reluctant pioneer.” I was obedient to God’s call and I am faithful to that call 25 years later, but I am still happy to report that I tried hard not to drain the swamp in the process.
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The Rev Susan Bowman is an Episcopal priest focused now on writing a book about her journey to the priesthood. Visit her blog at http://ladyfather.com and her website at http://gettherightwriter.com to learn more about her and her upcoming publication
March 23rd, 2010 15:58
Rev Susan - Clearly God is a feminist. And good for you for persevering.
March 24th, 2010 07:36
[…] Newsweek And Sexism by Echidne of the Snakes Missing the point about race and feminism by Allision at EconomicWoman Sexism at Work: Young Women, Newsweek, and Gender…and Race Julia Berry, at InHerImage What’s wrong with this feminist picture? by Nona at GirlDrive Will Newsweek Respond to Claims of Sexism? […]
April 1st, 2010 07:03
Just thought I’d flag a recent article by Lynn Povich in The Huffington Post, which takes off from “Are we there yet?” (discussed above): “Our Daughters, Ourselves” - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-povich/our-daughters-ourselves_b_517786.html
It’s all the more interesting because, as those who follow this blog no doubt know, Lynn was one of the 46 women who sued Newsweek for gender discrimination 40 years ago.
April 6th, 2010 13:22
I think that what you did was very courageous. Women face a lot of discrimination in any religious sect, it takes a very brave women to stand up in such a way and continue with it for a long time.
April 17th, 2010 03:36
Love this article. Thanks for hitting us between the eyes.
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