#riprbg 💔👑 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, champions for equality. Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the way the world is for American women. For more than a decade, until her first judicial appointment in 1980, she led the fight in the courts for gender equality. When she began her legal crusade, women were treated, by law, differently from men. Hundreds of state,federal laws restricted what women could do, barring them from jobs, rights and even from jury service. By the time she donned judicial robes, Ginsburg had worked a revolution. "The words of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause — 'nor shall any state deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.' Well that word, 'any person,' covers women as well as men. And the Supreme Court woke up to that reality in 1971," Ginsburg said. She was an unlikely pioneer, a diminutive and shy woman, whose soft voice and large glasses hid an intellect and attitude that, as one colleague put it, was "tough as nails." By the time she was in her 80s, she had become something of a rock star to women of all ages. Marty Ginsburg, graduated and got a job in New York; his wife, a year behind him in school, transferred to Columbia, where she graduated at the top of her law school class. Despite her academic achievements, the doors to law firms were closed to women, and though recommended for a Supreme Court clerkship, she wasn't even interviewed. She liked Social Security cases because they illustrated how discrimination against women can harm men. "This absolute exclusion, based on gender per se, operates to the disadvantage of female workers, their surviving spouses, and their children," Ginsburg told the justices. "The words of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause — 'nor shall any state deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.' Well that word, 'any person,' covers women as well as men. And the Supreme Court woke up to that reality in 1971". In 2014, she dissented fiercely in a decision that allowed some for-profit companies to refuse, to federal mandate to cover birth control by healh care plans. #women #men #equal @npr https://www.instagram.com/p/CFTk5gqHQ4j/?igshid=1ttzswvkcszel