Written by Emily Cranston
September 30, 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or as some generations may call her, ‘Notorious RBG’, has recently passed away after an 11-year battle with pancreatic cancer. As many grieve the loss of a strong feminist icon, it is more important than ever to reflect on what a fundamental role Ginsburg played in advancing women’s rights and dismantling the barriers that prevent gender equality.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Cornell University at the top of her class in 1954 and subsequently went on to attend Harvard Law School as one of eight women in her class of 500. At that time, women were strongly discouraged from taking a spot that could otherwise go to a man. Despite this, Ginsburg not only succeeded in her academic life at Harvard but became the first woman on the Harvard Law Review, a reputable legal journal. All the while, Ginsburg maintained her studies while balancing her life as a mother. Ginsburg eventually graduated from Columbia University Law School after transferring due to her husband’s job. She continued to excel academically to eventually become a tenured professor at Columbia, the first for a woman there, after teaching many years at Rutgers University Law School. That is not to say Ginsburg had an easy time finding employment, as she faced gender discrimination when looking for work after graduation despite her academic accomplishments.
In the 1970s, Ginsburg was active as the director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties and fought in quite a few ground-breaking cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1976 case, Craig v. Boren, Ginsburg argued for equal treatment for men and women on an outdated Oklahoma state statute regarding the sale of low percentage beer to women at a younger age than men. This case is particularly noteworthy, as it was the first time that the Fourteenth Amendment provided protection against discrimination against sex as well as race.
In 1993, Ginsburg was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, preceded by 13 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Columbia. Ginsburg was confirmed 96 to 3 by the Senate, although there were some who dissented. The U.S. Supreme Court is commonly where controversial laws are contended and given their final verdict, which is to say that Ginsburg was able to position herself, despite the discrimination she faced to get there, to advocate for gender equality.
In United States v. Virginia (1996), only three years after her appointment to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg wrote the majority’s opinion regarding a program at the Virginia Military Institute that kept a men-only admission rule. As she stated, “Generalizations about ‘the way women are,’ estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description”. The state-run Virginia Military Institute countered that the military-focused content was not appropriate for women, but Ginsburg vehemently disagreed insofar that that curriculum was not suitable for most of the college students regardless of their gender.
Ginsburg continued to advocate for women in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) where the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was upheld in a 5-4 vote. Ginsburg emphasized that the judgement was clearly an attempt to “chip away at women’s rights,”. Later that year, Ginsberg disagreed with the majority opinion, 5-4, of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire where the decision was made that a woman could pursue a federal civil suit for lower pay than a man against her employer.
Ginsburg was also a strong supporter for same-sex marriage in 2015, and argued that in the past “Marriage was a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female,” and that gay marriage does not weaken the institution of marriage by any means. This likened the idea that not allowing same-sex marriage is also a form of sex discrimination.
In 2016, Ginsburg wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times, and acknowledged that throughout her lifetime, she has seen much progress in the fight for women’s equality specifically citing the progress in the legal field as “[A]bout half the nation’s law students and more than one-third of our federal judges are women”. These are only some of the effects of Ginsburg’s efforts that have truly afforded many women today the right to the same opportunities and considerations as any man. Ginsburg’s life and notoriety are a testament to the fact that there is no such thing as an inferior gender. However, even with all of Ginsburg’s accomplishments in the fight for gender equality, there is still work to be done to truly achieve gender equality as gender discrimination still thrives in many aspects of society. As Justice Ginsburg comments on the work that still needs to be done in her piece in The New York Times,
“Most people in poverty in the United States and the world over are women and children, women’s earnings here and abroad trail the earnings of men with comparable education and experience, our workplaces do not adequately accommodate the demands of childbearing and child rearing, and we have yet to devise effective ways to ward off sexual harassment at work and domestic violence in our homes. I am optimistic, however, that movement toward enlistment of the talent of all who compose “We, the people,” will continue”.
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