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 Ginsburgβs 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 βIf 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
I believe that never was a country better adapted to produce a great race of women than this Canada of ours, nor a race of women better adapted to make a great country.
When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty.
Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men ... They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty.
For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that's taking something that potentially should be celebrated - a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way - that's taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.
For here lies the corner stone of all the injustices done woman, the wrong idea from which all other wrongs proceed. She is not acknowledged as mistress of herself. For her cradle to her grave she is another's. We do indeed need and demand the other rights of which I have spoken, but let us first obtain OURSELVES.
I can't say that the college-bred woman is the most contented woman. The broader her mind the more she understands the unequal conditions between men and women, the more she chafes under a government that tolerates it.