(FORTUNE Magazine) – Is former Gannett chairman Al Neuharth, 65, a male chauvinist? After sparking controversy with an article that castigated the airlines for hiring homely flight attendants, he published Confessions of an S.O.B., filled with such gentlemanly homilies as ''Screw only when you're horny.'' Readers of the book may thus wonder about his sincerity when Neuharth reveals ''the secret to managing women and minorities: Treat them the same as you do all other people.'' But that's exactly what he did during his imperious reign at Gannett, the women who worked for him there attest. ''He made this company first-rate in equal opportunity,'' says Cathleen Black, 45, who is trying to propel Gannett's flagship USA Today to its first fully profitable year in 1990. ''I'm a great recipient of the policy, but it goes back years and years.'' Black is one of 18 women publishers out of 76 in the chain. What then could Neuharth have been thinking when he called for the return of ''sky girls?'' ''I'll never really figure that out,'' confesses Black. She suspects the remarks were aimed at creating advance publicity for the book. On the other hand, she says, it might have been provoked by the ''great shock'' of flying a commercial airliner after 19 years of zipping around in the corporate jet.