Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Wife, Mother & Gender Equity Advocate
Hear audio from Stephanie Francis Ward’s interview with Justice Ginsburg about her Gender Discrimination Cases and Balancing Career & Family.
It’s ironic that being a parent was what made law school easier for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For a woman in 1950s America, motherhood was held out as the reason that she shouldn’t even have been there.
“I think my life was more balanced,” says Justice Ginsburg of her years as a student at Harvard and Columbia law schools. “I was less apprehensive than my classmates because there was something going on that was more important, frankly, than the law.”
In an interview at the U.S. Supreme Court in August, Justice Ginsburg talked about her career as a lawyer and judge; about marriage to her late husband, Martin; and about the changes that women have seen in law and parenthood.
Confirmed for the court in 1993, Ginsburg, now 77, became the second female justice, joining Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. With Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the court now has three women.
But friends and colleagues say that understanding Justice Ginsburg and her insistence on gender equality begins with her relationship to her husband and children. Their marriage—and the sharing of expectations and parenting responsibilities—impelled both Ginsburgs to achieve.
Continue reading “Family Ties: The private and public lives of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg” in the October issue of the ABA Journal.
