Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.
The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the challenges women face in pursuing gender equality within academic institutions, suggesting their efforts may jeopardize their professional advancement.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s quote reflects the societal bias that often undermines the efforts of women advocating for gender equality. It points to the belief that such advocacy is seen as less serious or important within the academia, which can lead to women facing disadvantages in their career progression, such as achieving tenure in law schools. This illustrates the broader systemic issues that devalue women's contributions to the fight for equality and justice.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture discussing women's rights and academic policies, this quote can illustrate the barriers women face.
More from Ruth Bader Ginsburg
All quotes →If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don't say, 'You don't know how to use the English language,' or 'How could you make that argument?' It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.
I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they're men or women.
The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.
A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.
My resume showed membership on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, a credit impressive abroad where it was not generally known that Law Reviews were student-operated publications.
Similar quotes
Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!
Until mothers earn their livings, women will not
Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. … Gender equality is your issue, too. … I've seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help, for fear it would make them less of a men—or less of a man. I've seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don't have the benefits of equality, either.
It doesn't matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women's voices will never be heard.
Directors didn't want to work with me because I was 'too controlling.' If it had been a man, it wouldn't have meant a damn thing.