Word: robertson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...title, Girls in the Balcony. The balcony in this case is the balcony of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. During the 1950s and '60s, "every man of consequence on the globe" who had anything important to say would do so in a speech at the club, Robertson tells. The problem was, however, that the club did not allow women as members. After much rumbling from the women, the club eventually devised a plan to let the women cover the speeches: The women reporters were squeezed onto the balcony of the club, outside of the ballroom where...
...whom received little remuneration and whose careers were in fact resigned to dead ends at the Times forever, because of their insubordination. Yet thanks to their efforts, the suit was to become "the single most important collective event in the history of the women at the Times," says Robertson. Without it, women would never have been brought into the ranks of the Times at the rate which the court order required--although the Times did not live up to all the outlined obligations...
...Robertson should be praised for doing something which has never been done to this degree: relating in detail and with compassion the story of the women of the Times, especially the stories of those like Wade, Cook and Glueck, who are the unsung heroes of the women's movement. They were women who put their own potentially high profile careers on the line for the sake of 600 other women on their paper and the millions of women and men who read and are influenced by the Times...
Despite her valiant subject, Robertson fills her book with excessive and lavish praise of the women involved in the suit. One gets the sense that her objectivity may have been sacrificed for the sake of her friends and former colleagues...
...whether Robertson's book does what the back cover proclaims--"finally set the record straight on sex discrimination at the America's paper of record"--is another matter entirely. Robertson's coverage of the suit in such a personal way--and her behind-the-scenes account of the internal Times debate over the naming of the alleged Kennedy rape victim in Palm Beach--do very little beyond offer the same kind of "insider" Times gossip which all the Times chroniclers preceeding her have done. In a day when questions of women and work continue to baffle and bother feminists...