In the 1960s, Lynn Povich worked at Newsweek — where she became part of revolution.

"At Newsweek, women were hired on the mail desk to deliver mail, then to clip newspapers, and if they were lucky, became researchers or fact checkers," Povich tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer, whom she knows personally. "All of the writers and reporters were men, and everyone accepted it as, that was the way the world was — until we didn't."

Povich's new book, The Good Girls Revolt, tells the story of how the women sued their bosses and changed the workplace. The first spark that set off the rebellion was in 1969 — five years after the Civil Rights Act made gender discrimination illegal.

"It was only as the women's movement started gaining steam that it suddenly dawned on us that, oops, there's something wrong with this picture here — that this movement doesn't just apply to those women, it applies to us, and we have to do something about it," Povich says. "And it's illegal."

Rabb put across goals and timetables. The women asked for a third of the reporters and a third of the writers to be women, and a third of the researchers to be men. They aimed to integrate the category to show that researcher was not a just a woman's job — it was an entry-level job for anyone with those skills, Povich says.

"Our final demand was that there be a woman senior editor. And they balked at this because it was management — we can't tell them who to put in management," she says. "And we just said, 'We're not signing an agreement where there's not a woman in the meetings where all the decisions are being made.' And they promised to have a woman senior editor by the end of 1975."