The payments came after 22 years of litigation and 15 years after a judge ruled that the Voice of America, a part of the U.S. Information Agency, had been guilty of sex discrimination in hiring.

A payment was also made to the family of a ninth woman who died before the government decided not to continue appealing her case and that of the other eight women.

"Everyone is very happy," said Jahanara Hasan, 56, one of the women turned away by the VOA when she applied for a job. "The government has accepted the fact that they did something very, very wrong."

The eight women gathered at a modest downtown law office yesterday morning and celebrated with a little champagne, orange juice and cake. The cream-and-raspberry cake carried a chocolate image of a VOA broadcast tower and the inscription, "Hartman – The Voice of Justice," a tribute to the lead plaintiff in the class action suit who, ironically, lost out on her claim of bias.

There were some hugs and tears. Cecilia Larkin brought her lawyers a bottle of red wine, a 1978 Chateau de Roques, to mark the passage of time.

"We were young when this happened. We didn't have gray hair then," said Judith Ambrose, who was 26 when she applied for a radio broadcast technician's position in 1976 and received a rejection letter saying more qualified applicants were hired.

Asked what she plans to do with her cash award, she laughed and said she plans to "buy a car that really runs" and stop worrying about how to pay for her daughter's college costs.

"I wanted to do this suit for my daughter. She is 18 years old and this kind of stuff can't go on anymore, not another generation. It can't," Ambrose said.

The original lawsuit, which now covers 1,134 women, charged that VOA discriminated against women who, from 1974 to 1984, applied for jobs as writer/editors, foreign language broadcasters, foreign information specialists, production specialists, radio broadcast technicians and electronic technicians.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey, who presided over the case until his death in 1997, ruled that the VOA was guilty of discrimination. He appointed a special master, law professor Stephen A. Saltzburg, to decide how much each woman is entitled to receive in compensation. District Judge James Robertson now oversees the case and approved the cash awards paid yesterday.

In addition to Ambrose, Hasan and Larkin, the other women receiving compensation in the case are Lynn Goldman-Bartlett, Ethel Genes, Rita Rochelle Hunt, Judith Neiman, Carolyn Turner and the late Sophy Goldberg.

The government "fought tooth and nail" virtually every issue raised in the litigation, said Bruce A. Fredrickson, an attorney for the women. The government appealed the case twice, took it to the Supreme Court and opted to resolve the 1,134 claims individual by individual. Fredrickson's law partner, Susan L. Brackshaw, estimated 2 million pieces of paper – letters, briefs and other documents – have been used in the case.

The case records portray the VOA as an agency that engaged in systematic discrimination against women. "The evidence suggests a 'good old boy' network with deep roots," the special master wrote in one case.

In other cases, the findings showed VOA destroyed records, altered grades on hiring exams, tossed applications from women into trash cans and misled women about why they were rejected.

Hasan, who came here from Bangladesh and works at that country's embassy, said she plans to use part of her cash award to help promote women's rights in Bangladesh. Ambrose, who was finally hired by USIA after a career in commercial television, said she will consider setting up a scholarship program for women.

She also took a piece of the cake home to her daughter, "because she has been with me the whole time this has been going on. This suit has been going on longer than she has been alive."