“Prejudice and bigotry are brought down...by the sheer force of determination of individuals to succeed” stated Condoleezza Rice (“Condoleezza Rice>Quotes” 1). Her statement entirely portrays Sandra Day O’Connor. Despite her rural upbringings and sexist prejudice she faced, she was still able to become the first female Supreme Court Justice. Her major accomplishment resides in her ability to remain impartial and make decisive swing vote decisions in cases, which have immensely influenced the twentieth-century along with today’s twenty-first century society.
Sandra Day O’Connor’s rural upbringing has shaped her identity. She grew up on her family’s cattle ranch, called Lazy B. As a child, she would help her parents around the ranch, while developing her love for horses and reading. She remarks how “reading meant so much more to [her family] living out where [they] did” (Marie, Joan S 4). Because of the ranch’s isolated location, she was deprived of educational benefits. Therefore, her parents decided to send her to live with her grandmother in El Paso, Texas. There she attended “Radford School for girls and Austin High,” where she was able to receive a well-round education (“Sandra Day O’Connor Biography” 2).
Graduating high school early at age sixteen, Sandra Day O’Connor furthered her education at Stanford University. There she developed her interest in the field of law. She graduated early from Stanford receiving two degrees, a “bachelor's degree in economics” and “law degree” (“Sandra Day O’Connor Biography” 3).
As Sandra Day O’Connor started seeking jobs in the public sector, she encountered sex decimation in the “work force” (Nichols, Blake 3). However, in spite of the sexism, she found a job working with the la...
... middle of paper ...
...he Bush vs Gore case dealing with election recounting has affected our current country’s state of condition. George W. Bush became our president instead of Al Gore since she decided to uphold the “original Florida’s electoral votes” (“Sandra Day O’Connor” 12). This affects our current country’s situation because if Al Gore was president our current society’s standing might be much different. Likewise, her strong support for roe vs. wade case in allowing women to have power in choosing abortion has shaped the abortion cases she dealt with during her term. Likewise, it also continues to affect how we, in today’s society, rule abortion cases constitutional or unconstitutional. In addition, she continues to make an impact on our society today through her website “icivics”. This website helps student learn about governmental branches and take part in case simulations.
Within Hon. Shirley Chisholm’s well known speech, Equal Rights for Women, which she presented on May 21, 1969, she discusses in detail the ideology of woman’s rights before the United States House of Representatives. She touches base on her own experience with discrimination, how society has prejudice against women, and introduces the Equal rights act, in which she states “that has been before every Congress for the last 40 years and that sooner or later must become part of the basic law of the land.” With her speech, Hon. Shirley Chisholm makes a substantial argument about women’s rights. With her use of anecdotes, counter arguments, and statistics, her speech obtains great value.
Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work. 1979, Columbia University Press, New York. p. 87
Salisbury, Joyce E. and Andrew E Kersten. “Women in the United States, 1960–1990.” Daily Life through History.ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
As cited in Padavic and Reskin’s article Women and Men at Work, discrimination against women in the workplace was a serious issue. They suffered as a result of inferior titles, wages and respect. This “glass ceiling” made it extremely hard for woman to break into higher offices in government organizations, yet O’Conner remained persistent. She finally found a position as a deputy county attorney and began to thrive in the legal field; even landing a seat on the Arizona State Senate where she became the first woman to serve as the state’s Majority Leader. In 1979, she worked on Arizona’s Court of Appeals until she was ultimately appointed to the Supreme Court in 1981.
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.
...that so much of the discourse is centered on women within fictional workplace sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, 30 Rock, and Parks and Recreation, I will examine how gender stratification in the fictional realm is a reflection of the real life gender stratification that continues today. I will examine case studies by reputable scholars that reflect gender preference of the people in positions of power at work as well as the reasons why. I will also review scholarly journals that discuss the expectations of gender roles, and how women are shamed or stigmatized for succeeding at tasks that are generally assumed to me masculine. This section will offer an explanation as to why successful, career oriented; females in positions of power are still preferred to stay within traditional gender roles, whether it is in real life or reflected on television.
One of the most effective reform techniques is to “investigate, educate, legislate, enforce” (Fee/Brown, 2). This straightforward manner of rectification was summarized and utilized by Florence Kelley during the Progressive Era in the United States. During a period where women lacked suffrage, and most didn’t have steady jobs, Kelley was the head of the National Consumer’s League and had a resume that boasted affiliation with various other esteemed organizations (Verba, 1). She epitomized independence and confidence through both her civil activism and in her personal life. Florence Kelley’s resolve, willpower, and determination set a precedent that is still followed today- nearly 90 years after her death. She was truly a trailblazer of the first generation of modern women.
beginning with a 1990s political climate that focused on the "get tough" campaign regarding the U.S. penal system. She points out that the gender constructs within our society lead to two approaches to "get tough": Men
All references are from Sweet Briar College's 1996 Orientation Anthology, (Women's Place, Women's Choices: The Public Careers and Personal Experiences of American Women. Ed. Cynthia M. Patterson and Martha Woodroof, 1996.)
In the 1920s, women struggled to develop a work identity that would give them professional status and preserve their femininity (Walkowitz, 1051). They wanted to be eligible for an executive position, but at the same time they also wanted to be Women finally began working outside the home, but not yet at the level, status, and rank they deserved. They deserved
Anita Hill gave women hope, but none of this would have happened if she had not have had the courage to speak up about the sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas. Even though the EEOC had defined sexual harassment as sexual discrimination ten years prior to the initial accusation, women were afraid to speak up about it. Sexual harassment was viewed as a victim’s probl...
For a long time traditional liberal legal theory has struggled to win gender equality through the courts, but has not made the necessary gains. This theory advises women to change their relationship to the male power structure, and offers two ways in which women can do this to attain equity: the “sameness” approach and the “difference” approach. The first approach, “sameness,” suggests that women should stress male-female similarities. Traditional theory justifies this approach by saying, “to the extent that women are no different from men they deserve what (men) have” (33). Traditional theory advises women who feel different to from men use the second approach, and stress t...
In conclusion, women throughout the decades have strived, from protesting to going on trials, to point out their rights. “Will women soon be treated equally as men?” A day when women and men having the same rights is still under way and has a far way to go as from the antebellum period. However, what makes women so unique, especially during this era is the numerous of contributions these respectful woman played a part of in order to see dramatic changes in America’s society. Some of the extraordinary ideas developed by them explains the success leading into what we call America today. Therefore, it is proven that women are certainly not helpless species, but are useful citizens who aroused much commitment for their “race” and nation.
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.
For several decades, most American women occupied a supportive, home oriented role within society, outside of the workplace. However, as the mid-twentieth century approached a gender role paradigm occurred. The sequence of the departure of men for war, the need to fill employment for a growing economy, a handful of critical legal cases, the Black Civil Rights movement seen and heard around the nation, all greatly influenced and demanded social change for human and women’s rights. This momentous period began a social movement known as feminism and introduced a coin phrase known in and outside of the workplace as the “wage-gap.”