Looking Back, Moving Forward

Last week I went to a lunch with my dad where Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke. Of course, everything she had to say seemed to carry a tangible weight of importance. What she has accomplished, and how she has done so, has made her a living example of the maxim she opened her remarks with; “the differences between men and women are something to celebrate, not denigrate”. She talked about how she had three strikes against her from the outset of her career – she was a women, she was a mother, and she was Jewish. Even though she graduated first in her class at Columbia Law School, no law firms would grant her an interview, and Felix Frankfurter refused to select her for a clerkship, saying that he was not ready to hire a woman. As a professor, she had to fight to receive a salary comparable to her male colleagues’, and struggled to be given a maternity leave. When she later started to handle gender equality cases, she encountered criticism from other women saying that she was not feminist “enough”. These roadblocks only motivated her to work harder.

Hearing all of this was significant, inspiring, and certainly reason to look up to Justice Ginsburg as a role model, but what had the biggest effect on me was something said by the friend who introduced her. Burt Neuborne had worked with Ginsburg in the early 70's when she was director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, and he talked about some of the landmark cases she argued during that time. In 1971 she put two names he did not recognize on her brief for Reed v. Reed (an important lawsuit where the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution was extended to women for the first time). He was curious about who these women, Dorothy Kenyon and Pauli Murray, were, so he investigated and found out that both had worked behind the scenes for women’s rights from the 1930's–60's. This was Ginsburg’s case. She had tried it, and she had won it, but she still gave credit to two of her predecessors who had not directly contributed in any way. Later when I went to go talk to Justice Ginsburg, I overheard her saying that Murray and Kenyon had worked just as hard as she, but that the world was not yet ready to listen to them. The fact that a woman of such esteem still recognizes the efforts of those who came before her really floored me.

When I first saw the term “shero” on my AGA application, I immediately began to think of all the women I admire. What I am starting to realize is that these feminists of past generations – Ruth Bader Ginsburg included – are more than just women’s rights superstars whose work had a static impact. Rather, they will be an integral component of anything one of us might accomplish. They are so much more than stepping stones because their contributions will be latched onto future work, and not only function as a mechanism for getting there. I think that sometimes we (and by “we”, I mostly mean me) become so focused on the problems facing women and feminists today that we forget that the sheroes we look up to are actually coworkers. Sure they “led the way”, but their legacy continues to be a driving force. I almost think that we should all imagine an invisible Dorothy and Pauli written in the list of blog contributors.