Women’s equality has made huge advancements in the United States in the past decade. One of the most influential persons to the movement has been a woman named Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth faced gender discrimination many times throughout her career and worked hard to ensure that discrimination based on a person’s gender would be eliminated for future generations. Ginsburg not only worked to fight for women’s equality but fought for the rights of men, as well, in order to show that equality was a human right’s issue and not just a problem that women faced. Though she faced hardships and discrimination, Ruth never stopped working and thanks to her equality is a much closer reality than it was fifty years ago. When Ruth first started her journey in law, women were practically unheard of as lawyers; now three women sit on the bench of the highest court in the nation.
On March 13, 1933, Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Celia Amster and Nathan Bader (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). Ruth had an older sister, Marilyn, but she passed away at the age of six from meningitis; Ruth was one year old at the time. Cecilia, Ruth’s mother, stayed home and took care of Ruth while she grew up. Cecilia made sure that Ruth worked diligently in school and taught her the value of hard work. Cecilia was diagnosed with cancer while Ruth was in high school and the day before her daughter’s graduation she passed away (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). One of the greatest influences on Ruth’s life was her mother and the values she instilled in her from a young age. Two of the greatest lessons that Ruth learned from her mother was to be independent and to be a lady, and by that she meant not to respond in anger but to remain calm in si...
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In particular, the factors that converged to allow the courts to play an important role in civil rights policy and SSM policy have not consistently been present in the area of women’s rights. Women’s rights activists have sought to use the courts in the same way that the NAACP used the courts to promote civil rights issues (Rosenberg 2008), choosing this path because like SSM advocates, civil rights advocates, and environmental advocates they had become frustrated and disillusioned with “legislative unresponsiveness” (Keck 2014, 173). Thus, the first condition for the creation of successful policy was in place; interest groups promoting women’s rights sought to use the courts as a mechanism for creating policy in a given
Perhaps no other jurist could have come to the Supreme Court under greater expectations. When President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981 to be the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, he did soto keep a campaign promise. O'Connor's nomination was quick to draw criticism from both the political people left and right. Conservatives put down her lack of federal judicial experience and claimed that she didn't have any constitutional knowledge. They considered her a wasted nomination and suspected her position on abortion. Liberals, on the other hand, could not deny their satisfaction at seeing a woman on the High Court, but they were disappointed in O'Connor's apparent lack of strong support for feminist issues. In time, however, O'Connor has come to answer all these criticisms. O'Connor has emerged from the shadow of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the Court's conservative bloc with her own brand of pragmatic and centrist-oriented conservatism. Even those liberals who branded her a "traitor" in her early years for compromising on abortion rights, now appreciate her efforts to keep the "pro-choice" message of Roe v. Wade in 1973. O'Connor's success should come at no surprise. From her country childhood to her career climb through a profession dominated by men, O'Connor often resorted to practical solutions as she worked within the system. This made her more important in the Supreme Court.
As an ambitious, disciplined, and devoted woman, Susan B. Anthony was a prominent women’s right activist who established the women’s suffrage movement in the nineteenth century and advocated equal rights for all women and men throughout her life. Born and raised in a Quaker family that considered women equal to men, Susan B. Anthony developed a sense of impartiality and wanted to ignite equality throughout all men and women. After teaching for fifteen years, Anthony became active in the temperance movement and the anti-slavery movement. However, since she was a woman, her right to speak publicly was denied which is one of the most significant concepts that encouraged her to become an effective woman’s suffrage leader. With the help of her
Sandra Day O'Connor. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 20 May 2013. .
Sandra Day O’Connor once said, “The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.”1 Here Sandra exemplifies her believes the power she has on the court is not based on the fact that she is a girl, but in the power that comes from her arguments. This example of confidence resonates as people often think that woman cannot do the same thing as men, but from the day she was appointed to the Supreme Court O’Connor changed politics forever. From growing up on a ranch in El Paso, to becoming the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court, she opened so many doors for women in male-dominated professions that were thought to be unattainable.
Shortly after high school, Bader attended Cornell University. During her years at Cornell, she became a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi and met her future husband, Martin D. Ginsburg. Bader graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23, 1954. A month after her graduation, Bader married Ginsburg and moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Soon after, she attended Harvard Law School and became one of nine women to attend that school out of five hundred. Unfortunately, her husband took a job in the city of New York, so she transferred to Columbia Law School and received her Bachelor of Laws in 1959. The reason I chose to write about Mrs. Ginsburg is because I remember her talking to my class. My fourth grade class went on a field trip to Washington, D.C. for a whole week. Over the course of the week, we had gone many different places and learned about many different things, one of them being about the Supreme Court. I can’t remember the building that we were in, but I remember Mrs. Ginsburg talking to us about what the Supreme Court is and its responsibilities. Since I remember her sharing that information with my fourth grade class, I decided to write about
When the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced, in 1923, it was just a few years after the 19th amendment had been passed. It continued to be reintroduced every year for the next 48 years without any success. The ERA had no major union backing it until the 1970’s, it lacked the support of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, and even the National Organization for Women did not endorse the ERA at its founding. In The fact that the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced every year for decades shows how persistent women’s rights activists throughout the 20th century in their pursuit of legal equality
In Reagan’s campaign, he needed more women voters to help him. He promised that if he was elected, he would elect a woman to the Supreme Court. Sandra saw the chance and jumped right in to make herself recognized. In 1981, Reagan was elected president and kept his promise. In his speech he spoke, “I made a commitment that one of my first appointments to the Supreme Court vacancy would be the most qualified woman that I could possibly find. Now, this is not to say that I would appoint a woman merely to do so. That would not be fair to women nor to future generations of all Americans whose lives are so deeply affected by decisions of the Court. Rather, I pledged to appoint a woman who meets the very high standards that I demand of all court appointees. I have identified such a person.” That person was none other than Sandra Day O’Connor. The senate quickly voted her in. She was the first person to be appointed in twenty-four years with state court experience and the first in thirty-two years with a lawmaking experience. Sandra Day O’Connor had a giant influence on women’s rights when she won this
“Throughout most of history women generally have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men…women in most nations won the right to vote and increased their educational and job opportunities.” Women’s Rights Movement in 1700s until present. Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem were some leaders and followers. Shirley Chisholm wrote “For the Equal Rights Amendment” on 10 August 1970 in Washington, DC., therefore, women can do anything a man can do. In Shirley Chisholm’s “For the Equal Rights Amendment” speech, she motivates her intended audience during the Women’s Rights Movement by using rhetorical devices of antithesis and ethos.
Equal rights in America has been an issue for many generations. Before the 1960s, women were second-class citizens compared to men who had all the rights available to them. The Equal Rights Amendment, also known as the ERA, was originally proposed in 1923 but unfortunately failed. However, Congress was only reflecting the society’s perspective of equal rights and were not the sole reason of the amendment’s failure to be passed. Women were not allowed to reach higher education or job roles in management. Medical and law schools had a majority of men and close to no women at all. Women were discriminated if they were tall or athletic. After high school, women
Even to this day, women have not reached maximum equality, but the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade has helped the women’s equality movement drastically take a step in the right direction. Prior to the case, women had their rights very limited and restricted. Everyone was and still is entitled to their basic rights, however pregnant women were not. Their first, fourth, fifth, ninth, and fourteenth amendment rights were violated and were not addressed until Jane Roe testified in court. The decision made by the court still has a lasting impact even to this day. The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade was not just a win for Jane Roe, but a win for all women as it helped break the barrier that surrounded women’s equality.
In the 1960’s, women’s rights organizations focused immensely on the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. By 1972, the Amendment was passed through the Senate and House of representatives and sent to the states for ratification. However, despite the activities hard work, only 35
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
A Cultural Revolution swept through the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. This revolution brought about change and affected nearly everyone—whether they supported the Cultural Revolution or opposed it. This time period in United States history consisted of radical movements and vicissitudes as cultural revolutionaries struggled for equality of all people of both genders and all races. When people think of this period, the civil rights movement and the fight for desegregation in America comes to mind. Although the struggle for racial equality is an important and unforgettable part of American history, there was another fight against inequality that many people overlook. This important part of our nation’s history was the fight for Equal Rights Amendment, also known as the ERA. Even though advocates for the ERA amendment strongly pushed for its passage during the sixties and seventies, the amendment was actually written in 1923, by Alice Paul, the founder of the National Women’s Party. (http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/) The Equal Rights Amendment pushes to outlaw discrimination based on gender. The ERA seeks equality in the specific areas of voting, employment, and education, as well as equality throughout society. Men have traditionally been considered superior, and women were expected to acknowledge their superiority and respect it. As the ERA states, women want to be recognized as equals and treated accordingly. However, the Equal Rights Amendment does not only protect and defend the rights of women; it also has a positive effect on men. According to a History Matters article on the Era, “The ERA will increase everyone’s freedom of choice within our society—no longer will a person suffer legal limitations or bear extr...
From the beginning of time, females have played a powerful role in the shaping of this world. They have stood by idly and watched as this country moved on without them, and yet they have demanded equal rights as the nation rolls along. Through the years the common belief has been that women could not perform as well as men in anything, but over the years that belief has been proven wrong time and time again. So as time marches on, women have clawed and fought their way up the ladder to gain much needed equal respect from the opposite sex. However, after many years of pain and suffering, the battle for equal rights has not yet been won. Since women have fought for a long time and proven their importance in society, they deserve the same rights as men.