Forever Legacy: Notorious RBG’s Drive For Equality in Law and Life
SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of gender equality, died at 87.
Thousands gathered for vigils near the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as near court houses around the country following the news of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, from complications from pancreatic cancer.
“Thousands gathered for vigils near the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and court houses around the US following the news of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, from complications from pancreatic cancer. #RBG #SCOTUS”
Men, women and children carried signs and lit candles in honor of the woman who spent a lifetime fighting for “the end of days when women appear in high places only as one-at-a-time performers.”
Linda Hirshman, author of Sisters in Law: How Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor Went To The Supreme Court and Changed The World, writes in Washington Post, “In her last years, people made songs and movies about her, and the public bought out her bobblehead dolls. None of that mattered to the real RBG. She cared about the Supreme Court, making it again the engine of an expanding legacy of American equality.”
Read more in Take The Lead on Hirshman’s book
NBC News reports that RBG “told her granddaughter before she died that her wish was not to have her seat filled until a new president is elected.”
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed," Ginsburg told Clara Spera in the days before her death, NPR reported.
Her legacy of standing for gender equality issues is reflected in her statement, “Sex, like race, has been made the basis for unjustified, or at least unproved assumptions concerning an individual’s potential to perform or to contribute to society.”
““Sex, like race, has been made the basis for unjustified, or at least unproved assumptions concerning an individual’s potential to perform or to contribute to society.” — #RBG #quotes #genderequality”
Growing up in Brooklyn, the daughter of immigrant parents, Ruth “Kiki” Bader was a baton twirler cheerleader in high school. Her mother died of cancer the day before her high school graduation.
“I pray that I may be all that she would have been,” she said in a later speech.
She attended Cornell University on a scholarship, and met her future husband, Martin Ginsburg, her freshman year. They were later married and had two children. He died of cancer in 2010; they had been married 56 years.
“He was the first boy I ever knew who cared I had a brain,” she later said of him.
They both attended Harvard Law School; she was one of nine women in a class of 550; Martin was a year ahead. She cared for their young daughter and him as he recovered from cancer while they were both in law school.
After moving to New York and graduating from Columbia University Law School, she earned tenure at Rutgers University law school as a professor.
“In 1971, she became the first director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project. When the resurgent conservative revival stopped the popular movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, she knew exactly where to go: to the Supreme Court. In the next nine years, she persuaded the justices to apply the Fourteenth Amendment to sex discrimination,” Hirshman writes.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her as a federal appellate court judge and in 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed her to the SCOTUS.
Read more in Take The Lead on gender gap in law firms
In her acceptance of the nomination, she said, “What is the difference between a bookkeeper in New York’s garment district and a Supreme Court Justice? Just one generation. My mother’s life and mine bear witness.”
Her legal career included monumental decisions such as Virginia Military Institute allowing women; fathers receiving the same rights as mothers for childcare; voting rights and equal pay.
“#RBG’s legal career included monumental decisions such as Virginia Military Institute allowing women; fathers receiving the same rights as mothers for childcare; voting rights and #equalpay. ”
“In our view the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,” she wrote in the 2007 case filed by Lily Ledbetter.
“I love the work I do,” she said. “I think I have the best job in the world for a lawyer.”
Read more in Take The Lead on RBG
NPR’s Nina Totenberg, a friend of Ginsburg’s for five decades, writes in NPR, “Ruth really did love being ‘the notorious RBG.’ At the opera, when her tiny figure, wrapped in a coat and babushka, would enter the Kennedy Center opera house from a side entrance, I don't know how, but people would see her, and the roar would begin, soon followed by a standing ovation, and loud cheering. And amid COVID-19 pandemic, she took to wearing a mask, with her tiny face printed on it.”
Totenberg writes, “She was an inspiration to so many women, especially young women. She often would come to our twice-a-year big parties, attended by lots of doctor friends, journalists and lawyers. She always came late when she knew the crowd would have thinned to a relative few. But there almost always were a bunch of surgical residents and a few of my former interns still there. It was such an amazing thing to see how they stood back, in awe of her, as I chatted with her, and she ate, undisturbed by the fact that we had 15 or so listeners. Even then, she was, in a sense, a performer.”
Here are highlights from lessons in leadership for all women taken from the 2018 documentary “RBG.” For all 10 lessons, read more here from Take The Lead.
1. Display no anger. Though her mother died right before her high school graduation when RBG was 17, she says her mother taught her to avoid “useless emotion” such as anger. You can’t win an argument by yelling, she says. Her calm demeanor has helped her deliver scores of dissenting opinions in deliberate and thoughtful tones, allowing for conversations to begin and not end.
“Display no anger. Though her mother died right before her high school graduation when #RBG was 17, she says her mother taught her to avoid “useless emotion” such as anger. #Lessons #Leadership”
Read more in Take The Lead on RBG and the fight for pay equality
2. Understand the weight of representation. Attending Cornell University in 1950 when the ratio of men to women students was 4:1, and later at Harvard, where 2 percent of the 1957 law school class were women, RBG says, “We were constantly on display. I felt you were failing not just for yourself, but for all women.” She attended a dean’s dinner at Harvard for the women in the class who were asked, “What are you doing taking a seat that could be occupied by men?” She then made a promise to herself to excel and succeeded in making Law Review, an honor for the top 25 students academically.
“Understand the weight of #representation. #RBG says, “We were constantly on display. I felt you were failing not just for yourself, but for all women.” #SCOTUS”
3. Find time to exercise. The octogenarian had a personal trainer and did daily pushups, planks and lifted weights—sometimes asking for heavier weights. Having survived two separate bouts of cancer, RBG paid attention to her health and workout routines and says she feels energized and ready to go after a workout.
“Having survived two separate bouts of cancer, #RBG paid attention to her health and workout routines and says she feels energized and ready to go after a workout. #NotoriousRBG”
4. Seed change step by step. “I seized the moment to change American society,” RBG said. “I wanted to build the idea of women’s equality step by step. It was like knitting a sweater.” She adds that she did feel like a “kindergarten teacher in those days,” because policymakers and others in power in the law and society did not see discrimination against women as a problem. Her motivation, as a mother and later a grandmother, she says, was, “I would think how I would like the world to be for your daughters or your granddaughters.”
““I seized the moment to change American society,” RBG said. “I wanted to build the idea of #womensequality step by step. It was like knitting a sweater.” #RBGLegacy”
Read more in Take The Lead on gender pay gap fight
5. Understand and utilize your power to change systems. Called a center of power in the Supreme Court, and an icon speaking truth to power about the ideals of women’s equality, RBG says her moves have been deliberate. She began at an early age to be independent, fend for herself and use her skills for the legal protection of the rights of women and for women to be treated fairly in American society. “I wanted to be active in the law,” she says. “I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam.”
“Understand and utilize your #powertochange systems. Called a center of power in the Supreme Court, and an icon speaking truth to power about the ideals of #womensequality, #RBG says her moves have been deliberate.”
Read the 10 leadership lessons from RBG in Take The Lead
In a recent speech, RBG spoke of the current political climate: “The true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle, it is the pendulum.”
“In a recent speech, #RBG spoke of the current political climate: “The true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle, it is the pendulum.” #RBGLegacy”
