I am starting my new rubric - women, who inspire me #WomenWhoInspireMe - Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020).
Daughter of emigrant from Odessa (that time part of Russia) and Krakow, Poland. An American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of USA from 1993 till her death September 2020.
She is on the the most influential feminist, she helped pass laws to archive gender equality in the US. Here’s a list of those laws:
1. Employers cannot discriminate against employees based on gender or reproductive choices.
Ginsburg pushed to have pregnancy discrimination recognized as a form of sex discrimination. Throughout the 1970s, the Women’s Rights Project (she was working at) also fought against forced sterilizations. The procedures disproportionately impacted poor women in the South who had been told sterilization was a requirement to keep their jobs, according to the ACLU.
2. Women have the right to financial independence and equal benefits.
Ginsburg’s work paved the way for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which passed in 1974 and allowed women to apply for bank accounts, credit cards, and mortgages without a male co-signer. She also helped ensure that women could receive the same military housing allowances as men.
3. State-funded schools must admit women
In 1996, Ginsburg le the ruling decision in the US. Until then, women had been prohibited from attending the Virginia Military Institute. Ginsburg argued that rather than create a separate women’s program, they should be allowed to join the same program as men.
4. Men are entitled to the same caregiving and Social Security rights as women.
Ginsburg stressed how gender equality benefits both men and women.
5. Juries must include women
Ginsburg fought to require women to serve on juries on the basis that their civic duty should be valued the same as men’s.
MY FAVORITE QUOTES:
ON HER LIFE:
"My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S."
ON LEADERSHIP:
"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
ON FEMINISM:
"Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, thank you!