The legal battle for "workplace parity" at The New York Times waged by a group of courageous women at the paper helped pave the way for female journalists like myself to have equal opportunities in the business. Nan Robertson wrote the history about the fight in "The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men, and The New York Times." Robertson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times, died Tuesday. She was 83.

The balcony in the title of Robertson's book is a reference to the National Press Club, which banned women from membership until 1971, so it's not ancient history. Back then, when newsmakers spoke at the National Press Club, women were allowed to cover them only from the balcony in the ballroom. I make sure I tell this story as often as I can to young female journalists so they appreciate that what they have now came only because of the women who put their careers on the line to pave the way for them.

Get the new
PD toolbar!

I've been honored to know several of the women who were the lead plaintiffs in The New York Times federal class action suit: Betsy Wade Boylan, whom I saw a few weeks ago at the Journalism and Women Symposium annual conference in Snowbird, Utah, and the late Joan Cook and Eileen Shanahan. Female journalists owe them all a debt -- as well as the brave women who were plaintiffs in class action lawsuits against the Associated Press, including Peggy Simpson, whom I also just saw at JAWS, and the late Fran Lewine.

On Robertson's death from Washington Post writer Patricia Sullivan:

"Nan Robertson, 83, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote about her nearly fatal struggle with toxic shock syndrome, then wrote a book about gender discrimination that's become a standard text in journalism, died last night of heart disease at Collingswood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rockville. She lived in Bethesda.

"She survived toxic shock syndrome, alcoholism, sex discrimination and three husbands. Eight months ago, the Washington Press Foundation gave her a lifetime achievement award for her ground-breaking book "The Girls in the Balcony: Men, Women and the New York Times."

Read Sullivan's full story about Robertson here.

The New York Times lawsuit, "later expanded to include all 550 women at the Times, was settled for $350,000 and an agreement to equalize salaries and promotions. The court record was sealed at settlement," Sullivan writes.

Betsy Wade -- she used her married name Boylan in the lawsuit -- told Sullivan, "Nan's book, published 17 years after the suit was settled, provides the only record of what we considered an important step for women in the most visible part of journalism at the time. But what other papers saw in this settlement was much more important: that if the Times can't win [a sex discrimination lawsuit], we'd better clean up our act."

Find The New York Times Robertson obit by Margalit Fox here.

I asked Wade and Peggy Simpson to share with Politics Daily readers some reflections on Robertson.

Said Wade, "When the women's lawsuit charging The New York Times with sex discrimination was settled, in 1978, the judge sealed all the documents involved. Fourteen years later, Nan's book, "The Girls in the Balcony," was published, and the painful struggle for sexual equality was detailed for others to learn from.

"It should not be forgotten that a parallel federal case, Benilda Rosario et al v. Times, was being carried forward in the same period by black and Hispanic employees at the Times. It was settled at close to the same time, but when those court records were sealed, the case sank into oblivion because no one wrote the compelling kind of account that Nan wrote.

"As Nichole Hollander said: "Telling about it is the best revenge."

Writes Simpson, "When I came to Washington in 1968 to cover Congress for the AP, I found very few women reporters. Nan Robertson was one of the energetic and insightful writers who occasionally came to Capitol Hill for The New York Times.

"She didn't fit any model: she had a dazzling smile but a lot of gumption, in asking presumptuous questions. She also was unusual in another way. She was an experienced and 'older' reporter and I was a relative youngun' but she answered my questions and treated me as a colleague, unlike some other 'elders.' "

"Decades later, after she made a Washington speech talking about her Pulitzer for her first-person toxic shock story, I sought her out and thanked her for being a role model to me, way back then, as someone who was many years older than I but who did her job with gusto. That was an eye-opener for me at the time, and I told her so.

"A woman with her at the lecture took offense at my calling Nan an 'older' journalist and seemed to think I was insulting her. Nan just beamed. She took the compliment as I meant it.

"She wasn't a famed policy wonk like Eileen Shanahan but wasn't a 'soft-side' reporter either. While she was not a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against The New York Times, she wrote a groundbreaking book about it that still conveys valuable lessons-learned about that era that resonate with a younger generation of journalists today. That's a tribute in itself."


Follow PoliticsDaily On Facebook and Twitter,
and download the new Politics Daily toolbar!