Ruth Bader Ginsberg was born on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, NY. She was a Harvard Law school student, then she transferred to Columbia Law school when her husband got a job in New York. She faced discrimination and sexism while attending law schools both by her Professors and male students in the classroom. She states, “the study of law was not so common for women of my generation.” One of her professors even offered her answer sheet in exchange for sex. Ginsberg was enraged, she went to his office and told him off for such repulsive behavior and walked out. Ginsberg became the first woman on both Columbia and Harvard Reviews. After her graduation, she struggled to find a job and faced discrimination in her personal life . She states, “I struck out on three grounds. I was Jewish, a woman, and a mother.”
In 1963, Ginsberg became the second female law professors at Rutgers Law School. She fought for equal pay when she witnessed her male counterpart being paid more for the same job. So, she and other female employees filed an Equal Pay Act complaint and they won. In 1969, Ginsberg began teaching a seminar on women and the law, requested by one of her students, which eventually sparked her interest in women’s legal rights. In 1972, Ginsberg was hired as the first female tenured professor at Columbia and continued to fight sex-based discrimination. In that same year, she also co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) where she began to receive sex discrimination cases. She fought six cases before the Supreme Court and won five of them. Her legal successes and passion for advocating for women’s rights led her to become the second female Jewish Supreme Court Justice in 1980.
Ginsberg served on the Supreme Court for 27 years and she’s the first Justice to officiate a same-sex marriage. She has become not only a “feminist icon”, but also the very first justice to become a pop culture icon. Young people were inspired by her and continued to embrace Ginsberg as a role model for justice, perseverance, and women empowerment. Ginsberg passed away on September 18, 2020 in Washington, D.C. due to the complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The quote below is one of Ginsberg’s most famous quotes about making a difference in the world:
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
