Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ryan Hooper

This showcase blog post will be about just one of the many ways that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought against systemic injustice during her life in honor of her legacy. Ginsburg was nominated by President Bill Clinton and served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1993 until her death in September of 2020, being the first Jewish woman and the second women to serve on the Court. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 1956 and was quickly inspired in her work by sexism she experienced herself during her degree and in the workforce as a lawyer. In the 70’s, she volunteered at the American Civil Liberties Union and became director of the Women’s Rights Project. It was during this time that she helped pass an amendment to Title VII called the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978. This act provided additional protections for women against being fired or not considered for a job on the basis of being or having plans to get pregnant [1]. This was huge progress in attaining workplace equality for women. Research in social science has illuminated that pregnancy-based discrimination is driven by stereotypes related to the competence and commitment of pregnant women rather than factual trends [2]. Pregnancy discrimination is a form of systemic injustice because it is an injustice enacted by corporations and institutions in how they treat their constituents. Before it was made illegal, it continued to be passively enabled by systems that did not take accountability for the inequality it produced. In Simone de Beauvoir’s book, The Second Sex, she writes, “Why is it that women do not dispute male sovereignty?” Throughout her career, Ginsburg did exactly that. Despite progress attained from the diligent work of remarkable individuals such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we are far from complete equity and equality in the workplace regardless of gender. Women working full time earned 81.6 cents to every dollar earned by men working full time on average in 2018 [3]. While this diary showcase submission focused on the work of RBG on a federal level, these disparities continue to affect women around the country, so it is certainly a day-to-day issue for the women close to me. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life work inspires me to fight for gender equality and equity throughout my life when opportunities arise to do so!