Not many girls went to college in the 1950s. Ruth made friends, but she also met girls who excluded Jews from their clubs. She met boys who thought girls should be looking for husbands. And then she met Martin Ginsburg.
As amazing as Ruth Bader Ginsburg was—and any attempt to understate that level can only be based on sheer ignorance—the social fabric of America in the middle of the century absolutely requires a shout-out to her husband, Marty. The “job” of young women in the age of Eisenhower was essentially to get married and procreate. Between World War I, the Great Depression and World War II, the male population of America had taken quite a hit. Poised to become the dominant superpower in the world, it was clear what American needed more than anything else: boys who could grow up to become soldiers.
Of course, there was more to it than that, but the point is that the odds were very much in favor of even someone as special and non-conformist as Ruth Bader falling in love with someone much less special and more conformist than Marty. Love makes people do crazy things and if it is ever possible to actually calculate the odds that this particular woman would meet and fall in love with a man equipped with such progressive feminist views, high self-esteem, and unshakeable self-confidence as her future husband, it will very likely reveal just how closely America dodged a bullet on that campus all those years ago.
Ruth’s law school class had a total of nine women—and five hundred men. She studied mightily and tied for first place in the class. And yet at graduation time no one would hire this brilliant new lawyer.
The text goes to ask why this would be the case. It goes without saying that if literally any single one of those five-hundred male classmates had finished top of the class, they would have been busy the next few months turning down job offers. So why was Ruth not inundated with offers? The obvious comes first: she was, indeed, a woman and in the 1950s the job of a young woman—has been covered.
It goes deeper than mere misogyny, however. All women had to face gender discrimination at the time. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a taller wall to climb. For one thing, she was already married and such was the view at the time than many employers likely questioned how long her husband would “allow” her to work. Not just married, she was already a mother and since motherhood was job one for women at the time, how much could she possibly be expected to focus on her job? And—last, but a long way from least—she was Jewish. With all this mind, it is worth looking at the eventual triumph of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as not just an incredible successful story, but almost a bona fide modern-day miracle.
“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
The final quote in the book is reserved for the back cover and is attributed to the Supreme Court justice herself. It is preceded within the book by a similar observations about her basic fundamental nature. “She resisted and persisted.” “Ruth disapproved right back.” “Ruth objected.” Established from the front cover, the book proceeds to pursue its theme with a vengeance. Everything culminates with a two-page spread reminding the reader that Ginsburg has disagreed with outdated ideas, of objecting to unfairness, resisting inequality and dissenting in the name of changing things for the better for those who groups that struggled too long under the oppressive authority of others. And over the years, those ideas and opinions and views of how things are supposed to be that one castigated her as a radical have become the mainstream and the norm.
