Notoriously Indebted

 


I am jumping forward to today. Recently, we all experienced a pivotal moment in American history - the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We all benefit today from her lifetime of fighting for gender equality. I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how much progress was made in my lifetime.



When I was in high school, home economics and typing were required courses for girls - to give us the skills to run a home and make a living as a secretary if we weren't fortunate enough to marry right out of school. Boys were required to take either auto shop or wood shop so they could become good breadwinners for their families. This was the accepted norm and for the most part it worked. On my old manual typewriter, I was able to type 70 words per minute with fewer than 5 errors in a 5-minute time trial. I was at 110 words per minute on the school's IBM Selectric typewriters, which looking back on it, were amazing pieces of modern equipment for my little school to have. Home Ec- now that was a different story. I remember having quite a few burned sauces and totally failed at sewing in a zipper. But then, running a home was not high on my priority list, I loved math and wanted to study Computer Science.

As a teenager just becoming aware of the world, I did not know that behind the scenes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was already working with the ACLU and had already won a case in the Supreme Court ensuring that the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to women as well as men. In 1971, she argued in the Supreme Court that an Idaho law preferring males over females when they were in an equal class for administering an estate when a person died with a will violated the equal protections clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and she had won taking the first step towards gender equality.

In my sophomore year, she won another case that awarded a man who was married to a female Air Force officer military spousal benefits. This man had been denied these benefits because it was inconceivable that a woman could be the primary wage earner for a family.

As I entered college, she won a third milestone case that awarded survivor benefits to a man whose wife had died in childbirth. Previously, it was unheard of that a man would want to stay at home and raise their own child. Men were expected to go to work and earn money for the wife or a nanny to raise the children. These cases helping men made it more normal to expect equal treatment for the genders. Though Ms. Ginsburg was not a well-known name at the time, her work with the ACLU powered the feminist movement. The feminist movement played a role in society much like that held by Black Lives Matter today.

Before I graduated college, another landmark win ensured that an employer could not base hiring decisions on gender. This was a significant cultural shift but paved the way for me to one of my first jobs. I competed for the position against a classmate, a young black man that I had done projects with during the year. He was so angry when I was awarded the position which he thought was rightfully his because of his race and gender. "You only got the job because you're a woman!" he yelled and then spat at me. Looking back, I can only imagine how hard it had been for Ms. Ginsburg to get to the position she then held. She had been required to not only have outstanding recommendations from multiple men but had needed to provide her husband's written permission to work.

She continued on in her career, fighting for equal protection for the genders. She influenced decisions on equal pay for equal work, Title IX changes which assisted women's sports as well as striking down college admission policies that discriminated based on gender. While on the Supreme Court she expanded her equality mission to include the LGBTQ community, race and students in special education. She spent decades fighting for true equality. Though we do not yet live in a perfect society in regard to equality for all people, we have come a long way from the typing/home economics paradigm in which I was raised.

Rest in Peace, Notorious RBG. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you did for gender equality. I was one of the first that did not need to rely on a man to make a living. I am forever in your debt. Though we never met, I would have lived a very different life if not for you and the other feminists that cleared the way for me.

I hope you ponder how much you benefit from her life's work and that you now have an idea of how much this tiny titan for equality truly achieved.


"Feminism [is the] notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents and not be held back by manmade barriers."

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg 


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