All rise to RBG
The tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) have been incredible. RBG is a role model, an inspiration, a hero. However, reading about her journey over the last few days (and the article by The New York Times is great), I keep thinking about how the barriers and challenges she faced not just shaped her view on the law, but also how they helped her find her path and her purpose.
RBG’s academic background is incredible and the job offers should have flooded in. However, at every turn RBG came up against barriers.
RBG’s academics:
RBG Graduated from Cornell.
She was offered a job as a claims examiner at the Civil Service rank of GS-5, but that offer was withdrawn after RBG told them she was pregnant.
She went to Harvard Law School - was one of only nine women in a class of 552 and was the law review editor, but when she moved to NY to be with her husband, Harvard would not let her spend her final year at Columbia Law School and obtain a Harvard degree. A policy that Harvard has now changed.
She received her degree from Columbia Law School - where she was also on the law review.
With such an impeccable academic background RBG should have been able to walk into pretty much any major law firm but that is not always the case and was definitely not in the case for RBG in the late 50s/60s. While RBG’s husband was offered a job at a top NY law firm, no law firms would offer RBG a job simply because she was a woman, a mother, Jewish.
RBG did not give up. When prestigious universities would not hire her, she obtained a teaching job at Rutgers Law School. When she could not get a job at a law firm, she volunteered to handle discrimination cases at the NJ affiliate of the ACLU.
These moves led RBG to live and work in Sweden, where unlike in the US ‘feminism was flourishing and childcare was readily available....’, to become the first director of the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, and with one move after another, RBG made it to the Supreme Court and changed our world forever.
RBG did not take no for an answer. The no’s guided her and shaped her into who she was meant to be and in doing so RBG found her PURPOSE, her calling.
Just imagine if RBG had taken the no’s and given up on her legal career or if she had been accepted into a law firm and become a corporate lawyer. She would not be the game changer, the icon we so admire, and the world would be a different place for many of us.
RBG showed us all how it is possible to change the world with grit and focus (and of course with grace and glamour) - one step, one action, one move and one case at a time.
Don’t take a no for an answer or as a failure. Just focus on what the next right move should be and keep moving forward. In honor of RBG, I urge you all to find your dream, your purpose and in doing so, see how you can change the world.
Thank you Ruth Bader Ginsburg for all you have done and for showing us how it’s done.