A matriarch of modern feminism - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fight against gender discrimination began in 1972 when her husband, Martin, presented her with the opportunity to defend a single man who was denied a dependent-care tax deduction despite caring for his ailing mother.

• The Ginsburgs took, and won the Moritz v. Commissioner case during which they were able to acquire, through the Department of Defense, a list of every clause of the U.S Code “containing differentiations based upon sex-related criteria.”

• After the Moritz case, Ginsburg began working with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and started legal procedures against gender discrimination in American law.

• In a case entitled Craig v. Boren Ginsburg convinced the court that “the familiar stereotype: the active boy, aggressive and assertive; the passive girl, docile and submissive” was “not fit to be written into law.”

• Constructing her argument around the 14th amendment, she won 5 out of 6 of her Supreme Court appeals.

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg pretty much single-handedly rid America’s legislation of gender classifications.

• Today, Democrats have pretty much relinquished diehard feminism to Palin but the irony of the situation is that Palin owes much of her spectacular ascension to the work of progressives and to one in particler.

• No matter what one thinks about Palin’s style of feminism, one should keep in mind that Justice Ginsburg is one of the women who made it possible.

Slate Magazine