Results: "I Would Like To Be Remembered As Someone Who Used Whatever Talent She Had To Do Her Work To The Very Best Of Her Ability" -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Published on 09/26/2020
QUESTIONS
GO to COMMENTS
Comments
1.
1.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and a pioneering advocate for women's rights, who in her ninth decade became a much younger generation's unlikely cultural icon, died last Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. Are you familiar with her?
Yes
69%
1615 votes
No
22%
517 votes
Undecided
9%
201 votes
2.
2.
Ginsburg had experienced gender discrimination her whole life. While at Harvard Law, she and the others in the small group of female students were asked how it felt to be taking up the spots of more-deserving, qualified males. Upon graduation, many firms were not interested in hiring her, despite her exceptional high honours, simply because she was a woman. She was a trailblazer for women generally but the architect of so many of our foundational rights. For women, she was the most important legal advocate in American history. She changed the way the law sees gender. In the 1970s, Ginsburg convinced the entire nation, through her arguments at the Supreme Court, to adopt the view of gender equality where equal means the same -- not special accommodations for either gender. Are you surprised that Supreme Court recognition for constitutional equality of women is only 50 years old?
Yes
38%
878 votes
No
46%
1071 votes
Undecided
16%
384 votes
3.
3.
Since she died on the eve of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah started on Friday night) her passing underscored one of the great lessons of her own life and of Rosh Hashanah: how we make use of the time God grants us matters. If anyone lived a life that could teach us this lesson, it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She understood the obligation to use her time to good effect. She spoke movingly of the Jewish values she was raised with — the pursuit of justice, caring for those in need, setting right what is wrong in the world — as ideas that inspired her work. Her legal brilliance, her extraordinary dedication and her legendary fearlessness led her to establish legal doctrines that shattered sky-high and deeply entrenched barriers to equality for women. Do you feel you have lived a life that truly matters?
Yes
37%
856 votes
No
31%
719 votes
Undecided
32%
758 votes
4.
4.
Which of these quotes from this great woman do you find inspiring?
"When I'm sometimes asked 'When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?' and my answer is: 'When there are nine.' People are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."
17%
400 votes
"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent."
20%
475 votes
"Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation."
17%
405 votes
"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
26%
606 votes
"This is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. It's a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she's being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices." (On abortion rights)
15%
345 votes
"We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman."
9%
217 votes
"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception."
20%
477 votes
"I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability."
22%
523 votes
All of them
29%
676 votes
None
30%
705 votes
COMMENTS