MALES DOMINATED the America into which Ruth Bader was born more than 87 years ago — to a degree today’s generations may find unimaginable. It was still the kind of country where almost all professional pursuits were for men only and marriage and child-bearing were the presumed destinies of every girl. Ruth Bader’s mother had been obliged by her struggling immigrant family to take a factory job so that they could afford to send her brother to college, even though she, too, had been a brilliant student who graduated high school at 15.
Indelibly affected by this injustice, and others, the woman who would become Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dedicated her life to defying and dismantling institutionalized gender discrimination, both on her own behalf and on behalf of all people. The America we inhabit today, where women fly military fighter jets, occupy a quarter of the U.S. Senate and account for half of all first-year law students, is a different and better — though still far from completely equal — nation, due in no small part to the courageous career of Justice Ginsburg, who died on Friday.
She passed away having attained not only the heights of the legal profession, but also, improbably enough, the status of feminist pop culture icon. Dubbed “the Notorious RBG” by youthful admirers, Justice Ginsburg by the time of her death was the subject of Hollywood movies, songs, a board game and countless Internet memes. Justice Ginsburg clearly reveled in the acclaim and used the platform it gave her to encourage and influence young women. But there was nothing glamorous or frothy about the ferocious work ethic and attention to detail that enabled her to rise in the law decades earlier. Persuasive argumentation, not celebrity, won her five of the six gender-equality Supreme Court cases she litigated for the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1970s. Continue reading.