Dirty Linen: How Women Sued the Reader’s Digest and Changed History, by Elaine Auerbach

Dirty Linen is an everywoman manifesto and a gentle tutorial  on fundamental civil rights activism by the working mom next door. Set  in Westchester County, New York in the 1970’s, Reader’s Digest was,  at the time, a staple in every household and a formidable publishing  powerhouse, portraying itself as having a backbone of righteous,  wholesome tradition. As the story unfolds, the author tells of the  all-too-common professional experience of assuming all paths were open  for her to ascend up the corporate ladder from her entry-level position  at Reader’s Digest. However, despite college pedigree, hard work,  and talent, she is dismayed and frustrated when her career (and the  careers of many of the women around her) did not progress forward.

Entrenched in a conservative and pristine corporate campus of white  walls adorned with world-class artwork, a group of women took a  courageous step outside the expectation of politeness, determined that  their experiences were, in fact, discrimination, and made the brave  decision to fight for change by filing a lawsuit. Aided in their  litigation efforts by students and lawyers, including Harriet Rabb from  the Columbia Law School clinic, as well as through a grassroots,  street-level advocacy campaign, these women made civil rights history by  achieving a financial recovery and implementing goals with timetables  and training.

The Reader’s Digest litigation spawned similar litigation at Newsweek and the New York Times.  For the litigation nerds among us, this story will thrill in its steady  and familiar telling of the litigation arc and the birth of using  regression analyses in civil rights litigation. It also serves as an  important reminder that litigation can be very hard for clients and can  have very real negative effects on their lives even in the most civil  settings, a reality that lawyers can sometimes lose sight of when in the  throes of passionately advocating on their behalf. In sum, this book is  very readable and a truly uplifting story of civil rights activism. The  author does a fantastic job of illustrating the inch-by-inch fight for  equality that is the unfortunate reality of civil rights work, and it is  recommended reading for everyone standing on the shoulders of those who  came before us in fighting for equality today.

Dirty Linen, How Women Sued the Reader's Digest and Changed History by Elaine Auerbach, is available for purchase at Amazon. 

Grant & Eisenhofer is not affiliated with the author or publisher  of this book and receives no financial benefit from any purchases made  through the link above.

"i could support you when we were talking about improving things for women, " she said tartly, "when we were dealing with our own problems. But this going to court, this taking it outside, I can't support that. You aren't making it better for us. You're making it worse. You've really messed things up now. I won't have any part of it--you, you girls--airing our dirty linen!"

"Dirty Linen." Is that all we had achieved? Did we simply hang our unsavory business out in the breeze and make things worse for everyone? It had certainly make things worse for me personally. Or, did we make a difference? Did we at least nudge the fight for equality in the right direction?

Her angry words came back to me as I stared at the magazine page. She had spit the words at me in the 1970s. Now it was 2019, decades later, yet I could still see and hear her as if it were yesterday.

I had been browsing the just arrived May/June 2019 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, when I had  glanced at the "In Memoriam" feature, a list of writers who had recently passed away.  I was looking down the list when the second name from the bottom name jumped out at me: Patricia Nell Warren.

Patricia Nell Warren had achieved fame as a writer of Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transgender (LBGT) fiction, or  "gay"fiction. But I had known Patricia Nell Warren as Pat Tarnawsky, condensed book editor for the Reader's Digest, my friend and cohort, a lover of gardens, a curly-headed, kind-hearted dynamo who wouldn't allow herself to be held back.

Sighing, I put the magazine down. I had to do something. I had once thought that Pat and I would write the story together. For too long I had waited and now Pat was gone. How many times had I said "someday?" Now it was time. I didn't feel I had a choice. I owed it to Pat and the other women and, perhaps, to history.

Ex-Reader’s Digest Employee Tells Story of Gender Discrimination Suit in New Book 

July 8, 2021 Martin Wilbur 220 Views Chappaqua, New Castle 4 min read

  Elaine Auerbach, one of the eight plaintiffs in a 1970s gender bias suit against Reader’s Digest, holds The New York Times article about the case after the settlement. Auerbach has written a new book about the experience. 

When Elaine Auerbach entered the workforce in the 1960s, she didn’t envision herself being a trailblazer. She planned on working hard and furthering her career opportunities with the chance for advancement.

But five years after being hired by Reader’s Digest in Chappaqua, Auerbach was at the center of a firestorm. She was one of eight women plaintiffs to have a lawsuit filed on their behalf against the company in 1972 that alleged gender bias.

At the time, Auerbach was an associate editor, having been hired after graduating Douglas College in New Jersey in 1967. Her job was to condense articles to fit into the magazine’s format.

Despite hoping to have a long career at Reader’s Digest, she soon found upward mobility would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

“I went in to the managing editor to signal to him that I had career ambitions,” Auerbach recalled. “Being a mother also didn’t indicate that I didn’t want to have a career. I asked what are the skills I needed to become a senior editor, and his responses was, ‘Oh, women don’t become senior editors.’”

Nearly 44 years after Reader’s Digest agreed to pay a more than a $1.5 million settlement, Auerbach has written a new book about the experience, “Dirty Linen: How Women Sued the Reader’s Digest.”

This Saturday she will participate in a book signing at Scattered Books, located at 29 King St. in Chappaqua, from 12 to 2 p.m. that coincides with its release.

Auerbach remembered that the jarring response that she received forced her to come to the realization that there were no women senior editors or women department heads, except for the excepts and research departments, which were entirely comprised of women. Her female co-workers never seemed to rise above associate editor.

“We figured maybe management didn’t realize that women wanted to have more of an opportunity, that maybe they don’t realize that many women are self-supporting or supporting families,” Auerbach said. “Maybe they didn’t realize they’re discriminating.”

She and another worker visited personnel and with the company’s permission developed a questionnaire to distribute to the company’s female workers. The results, outlined in a report that they called “the white paper,” revealed many more of the company’s women felt they had limited opportunities.

When their findings were ignored, that’s when they took legal action. Even though Reader’s Digest was a great place to work and DeWitt and Lila Wallace were wonderful people, Auerbach said they needed to take that step because the Wallaces, in their view, were breaking the law.

“It was extremely difficult,” she said of the decision to pursue the suit. “People were loyal to the Wallaces, they were loyal to Reader’s Digest and so were the women who took action.”

Columbia University, which had recently developed its urban affairs and clinical legal education programs, took on the case led by attorney Harriet Rabb. Rabb had just been named the first women dean in Columbia Law School history.

More than 100 women were interested in being part of the suit. However, it was easier to move ahead with fewer plaintiffs. Plus, many women who initially supported the litigation turned against the eight for causing trouble, Auerbach said.

The action was settled in November 1977, with the plaintiffs sharing the settlement money with all women in the company. It had far-reaching impact in the publishing and media industry, Auerbach said. While Newsweek also had staffers sue the company, they were looked upon as radical feminists from New York City.

“Reader’s Digest, however, was middle America, it was believed by everyone, it was family,” she said. “It was in everyone’s homes. It was such a big magazine. It was everywhere and it was about as popular as the Bible, and read just about as much.”

Auerbach had always intended to write the book when she had the time. Her plan was to team up with one of her colleagues at Reader’s Digest and co-complainants in the case, Patricia Nell Warren, who went on to become a noted novelist. In 2019, she learned of Warren’s death.

Nearly a half-century later, women are still earning less than men and have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, another motivation for Auerbach.

“I thought between the two of us, Patricia and I would tell the story,” said Auerbach, who would have a long career at PepsiCo. “But now she was gone and I was left to tell the story, and I figured I owed it to history. I feel that strongly that people today need to know what went into whatever progress had been made and whatever progress we hadn’t made. There’s more to be made.”