With the passing of the powerhouse that is Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we’ve collected 5 statements this remarkable woman has made that represent her changes to our global society.
-
Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.
According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), the number of stay-at-home fathers is “small”, with 4-5% of two-parent families nominating a “stay-at-home father”. This percentage hasn’t grown much in the last two decades but was considerably lower in the 1980s, according to the AIFS.
In 2015, Ryan Park, a former law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled, ‘What Ruth Bader Ginsberg Taught Me About Being a Stay-at-Home Dad’. His opening line was this:
“This past summer, on the last day of my clerkship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she rose from her cavernous desk and, following a hearty goodbye hug, asked me what was next. I told her that the next morning marked the start of my new job as a stay-at-home dad. She smiled warmly and wished me luck.”
-
The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg has made a number of powerhouse statements fighting for full gender equality on all platforms.
But this statement above was in particular relation to her stance on abortion laws and their removal of a female’s right to autonomy, passing that right on to the state. She was seen as an advocate for protecting female autonomy in abortion laws.
-
Most people in poverty in the United States and the world over are women and children. Women’s earnings here and abroad trail the earnings of men with comparable education and experience, our workplaces do not adequately accommodate the demands of childbearing and child rearing, and we have yet to devise effective ways to ward off sexual harassment at work and domestic violence in our homes. I am optimistic, however, that movement toward enlistment of the talent of all who compose “We, the people,” will continue.
In her 2017 Stanford Rathbun lecture and speech, Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the opportunity to share her optimism for the future of women in powerful positions, while highlighting the very existent barriers women still face in getting to the top. “As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it,” she concluded.
-
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.
CEO of NCC and contributor to The Atlantic, Jeffrey Rosen shared details from a revealing interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg that elaborated on this quote above, which is noted as one of her most popular statements.
When Rosen asked about RBG’s mother, who passed away while she was in high school, he recounted a popular quote by RBG’s mother that said: “be a lady, be like Eleanor Roosevelt, master your emotions” and asked her how that statement carried her forward. Ginsburg replied:
“Her advice was to be independent. It would be very nice if you met Prince Charming, married, and lived happily ever after. My mother said, “Always be prepared to be self-standing, to fend for yourself.” Her advice came at a time when most wives were considered properly dependent on their husbands. If a man’s wife worked, that reflected adversely on him…There was an enormous change from the birth of my daughter to the birth of my son, 10 years later. In the ’50s—Jane was born in 1955—there were very few working moms. Ten years later, when my son was born, a two-earner family was not at all unusual. There was a sea change in the way people were ordering their lives in that 10-year span.”
-
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
At a Harvard University luncheon in 2015, Ruth Bader Ginsburg responded to a question about the advice she would give young women today with the above statement.
“Young women today have a great advantage, and it is that there are no more closed doors,” continued Ginsburg. “That was basically what the ‘70s was all about. Opening doors that had been closed to women.”
As put by the Huffington Post in response to this exchange:
“Thanks for holding those doors open, RBG.”
