How Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed work for women—and men too: InternationalWomensDay
Concluding as it does with this first example of Justice Ginsburg's belief that the way to tackle discrimination was incrementally, a case at a time, the movie does what all good examples of its type do - piques the interest and inspires the watcher to seek out more information.
. That need is ably served by , the documentary in which the subject appears extensively, by turns explaining her legal thinking, demonstrating her by now famous exercise routines in the Supreme Court gym and perhaps surprisingly apparently revelling in her role as an internet sensation. But the incidents that will resonate most powerfully for many women of a certain age are featured in the Hollywood movie. There is the early scene in which each of the handful of women admitted to Harvard Law School in 1956 is invited by the dean to explain why they believed they merited a place that could have been taken by a man. The young Ginsburg's response is facetious: so that she could better understand and be patient with her husband . Later, although she came top of her year at both Harvard and at Columbia, to which she transferred when her husband took a job with a New York City law firm, she had great difficulty persuading anybody to hire her. This led to her becoming a professor, first at Rutgers and then at Columbia, and working with the American Civil Liberties Union. At this stage, becoming a Supreme Court justice could not have seemed very likely. However, reflecting how complicated life can be, Ginsburg benefited from the help and understanding of three men. Her husband, Marty, by all accounts never wavered in his support for her and in his readiness to do what was required to further her career. Then, when Jimmy Carter became president, he determined to make the judiciary more representative of the nation as a whole and appointed Ginsburg to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980. Thirteen years later, Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court, with the Senate approving her nomination by 96 votes to three. Marty, who died in 2010, was clearly a man ahead of his time in his view of women's place in society. Equally obviously, many men still have a long way to go in catching up with him. It is one thing to change the law and quite another to change attitudes. Inmuch is made of the decision in a case brought by the Justice Department against the Virginia Military Institute over its refusal to admit women. That was in 1996 and, although the Supreme Court, with Justice Ginsburg writing the opinion, decisively found against the school, the institute flirted with the idea of evading the ruling by going private. Her response to those who claimed that the decision would be detrimental to the school had been:" Wait and see. You will be proud of the women who become graduates of VMI." And she was sufficiently forgiven to be guest of honor at the ceremony marking the twentieth anniversary of co-education. into accusations against the first female superintendent of the Grand Canyon National Park demonstrate that, even in a government body and even in 2019, there is no guarantee of equal treatment. No evidence of wrongdoing by Christine Lehnertz has been found, but her lawyer is concerned that she remains vulnerable to further malicious allegations and said he would be negotiating the terms of her return to work. We can celebrate Kylie Jenner's achievement, but we should not forget that it would have been unlikely to have come about without the steady work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others like her. Much remains to be done — in terms of changing laws but also with regard to society's attitudes to individuals' roles at work and in their families and communities. In the meantime, the very fact that an octogenarian jurist has become something of a folk hero suggests that the times might not be as bad as is feared.Roger TrappI am a U.K.-based journalist with a longstanding interest in management. In a career dating back to the days before newsroom computers I have covered everything from pop...
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