Free The Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich

years, her father had finally walked out. Her mother was so hysterical that Judy, ever the “good girl,” came home.
    Back in New York, this brilliant Marshall Scholar couldn’t find a job for six months. She thought about going to graduate school in psychology, but “I didn’t have a real goal,” Judy said. “I didn’t have a goal of getting married, but I didn’t have a career goal either. I thought about law school but I needed money.” She also needed a home. While living with her mother, Judy continued to see her father, which infuriated her mother even more. Judy finally left, sleeping on friends’ couches until, with the help of her father, she rented an apartment at 14 East Ninety-Second Street.
    Later that year , Judy got an interview at Newsweek with Rod Gander, the chief of correspondents, who told her up front, “If you want to write, go someplace else.” Short of money, she took a job as the “Elliott girl,” the young woman—always a woman—who ran copy from Oz Elliott to the editors on Thursday and Friday nights until two in the morning, and all day Saturday. It was a terrifying job because when Oz would call “copy,” he would eye you like a cop waiting to nab a perp, sternly looking over his glasses to make sure you took the story from the correct wooden out-box. But it was a good schedule for Judy because it allowed her to continue to search for a job where she wouldn’t have to type. After six months of looking for work, Judy reluctantly took a research position in early 1968 in the Nation department. The other Marshall Scholar at Newsweek was her boss, Nation editor John Jay Iselin, a direct descendant of one of the founding fathers, John Jay.
    In the fall of 1969, Judy got a call from Gladys Kessler, a friend of a friend who had just moved to New York. Over lunch Gladys, a lawyer, asked Judy about her job at Newsweek . When Judy explained what she did at the magazine and how all the women were researchers, Gladys said, “You know that’s illegal?”
    Judy was incredulous. Gladys explained that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination based on sex, among other things, and told her to call the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which had been set up in 1965 to handle such cases. The next day, Judy went to work and, on the magazine’s free tie-line to Washington, dialed the EEOC office. Hesitantly, she explained the situation to the woman on the other end of the line. “I don’t think these men know that it’s illegal,” she said. “They’re very liberal and they have daughters and I think we should talk to them.” The gruff-voiced woman barked back, “Don’t be a naive little girl. People who have power don’t like to give up that power. What’s so wonderful about your case is that it couldn’t be more clear-cut and that’s going to change if you let on. You have to organize and keep it secret and file a complaint. If you ask them about it, they will hire two token women and that will be the end of it.”
    Click!
    Judy was shaken by the call. Now there was a moral issue. “I thought if this is illegal and it’s going on here, then I should do something to correct it,” she later explained. “That was really hard.” She also knew that what she was going to do would change her life. “I saw myself as a nice person but I was starting to behave in a way that I never had before,” she said. It was tearing her apart. As she weighed her thoughts, Judy struggled, with great inner courage, to overcome a deep-seated code of conduct. “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. That is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I felt I had to sue.” She scheduled a lunch with her two pals in the Nation department, Margaret Montagno and Lucy