AFTER GINSBURG,THE DELUGE
Liz Elting Contributor ForbesWomen
29/9/2020
The year is 1993. It’s August, and Bill Clinton has been president for less than a year. During the 1992 campaign, his partner Hillary was facing a sexist public reckoning: was she enough of a wife and mother? After all, she had kept her name throughout her tenure as First Lady of Arkansas and defended her decision to keep outside employment rather than stay at home baking cookies. Remember, this was almost three decades ago, when working women were still regarded with a fair bit of suspicion and Family Circle (then still in circulation) ran a quadrennial cookie recipe contest for potential First and Second Ladies of the United States.
UNITED STATES - JANUARY 20: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives for President Barack Obama CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES
In that environment, Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died ten days ago at 87 after 27 years on the high court, where she served as perhaps the primary defender of women’s rights and independence. When she took office, it had been only 12 years since women were released from legal subordination to their husbands, and state-funded schools were still allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex in admissions.
Here in 2020, it may actually come as a bit of a surprise the extent to which women were subordinated by the state. The military could compel pregnant servicewomen to get an abortion or else resign and didn’t stop that until 1972. Women couldn’t apply for credit cards or mortgages in their own right until 1974. Women could be excluded from juries until 1993. Women could be compelled to carry dangerous pregnancies to term until 2007. And circling around each of those decisions, either on the bench or arguing in front of it, is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
She’s had plaudits aplenty in the days since her death, and rightly so. She’s easy to applaud. Superlatives attach themselves to her like barnacles on a ship at sea. She was a sui generis advocate, attorney, and judge. But I’m not here to praise Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but to speak to where we find ourselves now that she is gone. Because she is gone.
The obvious place to start would be to look at the makeup of the bench if Amy Coney Barrett takes her seat, at her history and public statements, in the big hoary arguments of academic law. That would only be part of the picture, however, because the reality is far more complicated; one complicating factor in particular is the pandemic.
We as women are in the midst of an entire new series of challenges to our rights on a level that I am not sure we could have predicted a few short years ago. COVID-19 has disrupted our ability to live our lives in ways large and small, a disruption that has fallen disproportionately on women, who are bearing the brunt of the economic and emotional damage it’s wreaking. It’s not a secret; every repercussion—from the childcare crisis to the looming eviction disaster—is a heightened threat to women for the same reason we make seventy-nine cents on the dollar: our labor is not valued.
This matrix of events—pandemic-induced economic and social dislocation alongside an increasingly reactionary court—places us in the position of having our social rights (especially in the workplace) challenged and the challenge being upheld.
Where do I begin? Women are being tacitly and even explicitly encouraged to voluntarily resign their positions because they have children to take care of, which ostensibly gets in the way of the unfettered march of capitalism. Even without that pushing force, working moms are spread thinner than ever; they have children to homeschool, jobs to perform, and household chores to carry (responsibilities men are shirking). Women dominate retail work, which means we’re disproportionately affected by closures and lockdowns. We are, more than ever in history since the middle of the twentieth century, being pushed out of the workforce. What worries me more than anything is what happens when those push factors come before the courts, because they’re going to. Of course they’re going to—and under less-than-favorable conditions.
We’re staring down a social landscape that rolls back progress and reaffirms traditional gender roles rather than breaking them down, where millions of women have to leave the workforce long enough to derail their careers. That means fewer women managers hiring fewer women candidates, fewer women reaching the c-suite or boardroom, and therefore fewer women in a position to argue on our behalf. The current choice facing working moms is just another manifestation of the motherhood penalty, or the enforcing of the idea that women don’t really belong in the workforce by holding female applicants to the ridiculous standard of “will never marry or have children.” The losses have already been staggering.
It saddens me deeply to see Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy, what she fought for her entire life, teetering on the precipice. But you and I have it in our power to stop that from happening. It’s not going to come at the ballot box alone, but in the decisions we make every day, in what we communicate to our daughters and sons about the value women hold and offer, in our conduct as business leaders, managers, or hiring officers. These are decisions that we make day by day, you and I, to embody our secular credos. The rollback we’re already seeing didn’t begin in the Supreme Court, the halls of Congress, or the White House. Instead, it took root in millions of daily decisions by people in the position to decide them.
I don’t know what the future holds, and it’s not my place to try and say. We may not have a reliable path to codify our values into law or before a sympathetic court. But we do have our lives, and our choices. Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t start on the Supreme Court. She started by organizing, pushing back against arbitrary values, fighting for what she (and all of us) deserved, and forcing others to adapt to her by the sheer power of her brilliant and dedicated mind. But we don’t have to be as notorious as RBG to effect change in the world. If we commit ourselves to the wellbeing and advancement of women in the workplace and beyond, we will be doing our part, small it may be, to build this better world she could see twinkling in the distance.
We can do it.
Follow me on LinkedIn.
Liz Elting
I am a global CEO, entrepreneur, business leader, linguaphile, philanthropist, feminist, and mother. After living, studying, and working in five countries across the globe, and quitting a particularly nightmarish job, I decided it was time to chart my own future. Driven by a passion for language and cultural diversity, and a vision to break down boundaries, forge new paths forward, and connect people and businesses across the globe, I founded my dream company out of an NYU dorm room. Today, that dorm-room startup is the world’s largest privately-owned language solutions company, with over $500 million in revenue, 4,000 employees, 11,000 clients, and offices in more than 90 cities around the globe. As for me, I’m still fueled by a passion for breaking down boundaries – not only geographically, culturally, and technologically – but also in the workplace for other entrepreneurial women working toward their dreams and building a better tomorrow. You can follow me on Twitter @LizElting.
The year is 1993. It’s August, and Bill Clinton has been president for less than a year. During the 1992 campaign, his partner Hillary was facing a sexist public reckoning: was she enough of a wife and mother? After all, she had kept her name throughout her tenure as First Lady of Arkansas and defended her decision to keep outside employment rather than stay at home baking cookies. Remember, this was almost three decades ago, when working women were still regarded with a fair bit of suspicion and Family Circle (then still in circulation) ran a quadrennial cookie recipe contest for potential First and Second Ladies of the United States.
UNITED STATES - JANUARY 20: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives for President Barack Obama CQ-ROLL CALL, INC VIA GETTY IMAGES
In that environment, Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died ten days ago at 87 after 27 years on the high court, where she served as perhaps the primary defender of women’s rights and independence. When she took office, it had been only 12 years since women were released from legal subordination to their husbands, and state-funded schools were still allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex in admissions.
Here in 2020, it may actually come as a bit of a surprise the extent to which women were subordinated by the state. The military could compel pregnant servicewomen to get an abortion or else resign and didn’t stop that until 1972. Women couldn’t apply for credit cards or mortgages in their own right until 1974. Women could be excluded from juries until 1993. Women could be compelled to carry dangerous pregnancies to term until 2007. And circling around each of those decisions, either on the bench or arguing in front of it, is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
She’s had plaudits aplenty in the days since her death, and rightly so. She’s easy to applaud. Superlatives attach themselves to her like barnacles on a ship at sea. She was a sui generis advocate, attorney, and judge. But I’m not here to praise Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but to speak to where we find ourselves now that she is gone. Because she is gone.
The obvious place to start would be to look at the makeup of the bench if Amy Coney Barrett takes her seat, at her history and public statements, in the big hoary arguments of academic law. That would only be part of the picture, however, because the reality is far more complicated; one complicating factor in particular is the pandemic.
We as women are in the midst of an entire new series of challenges to our rights on a level that I am not sure we could have predicted a few short years ago. COVID-19 has disrupted our ability to live our lives in ways large and small, a disruption that has fallen disproportionately on women, who are bearing the brunt of the economic and emotional damage it’s wreaking. It’s not a secret; every repercussion—from the childcare crisis to the looming eviction disaster—is a heightened threat to women for the same reason we make seventy-nine cents on the dollar: our labor is not valued.
This matrix of events—pandemic-induced economic and social dislocation alongside an increasingly reactionary court—places us in the position of having our social rights (especially in the workplace) challenged and the challenge being upheld.
Where do I begin? Women are being tacitly and even explicitly encouraged to voluntarily resign their positions because they have children to take care of, which ostensibly gets in the way of the unfettered march of capitalism. Even without that pushing force, working moms are spread thinner than ever; they have children to homeschool, jobs to perform, and household chores to carry (responsibilities men are shirking). Women dominate retail work, which means we’re disproportionately affected by closures and lockdowns. We are, more than ever in history since the middle of the twentieth century, being pushed out of the workforce. What worries me more than anything is what happens when those push factors come before the courts, because they’re going to. Of course they’re going to—and under less-than-favorable conditions.
We’re staring down a social landscape that rolls back progress and reaffirms traditional gender roles rather than breaking them down, where millions of women have to leave the workforce long enough to derail their careers. That means fewer women managers hiring fewer women candidates, fewer women reaching the c-suite or boardroom, and therefore fewer women in a position to argue on our behalf. The current choice facing working moms is just another manifestation of the motherhood penalty, or the enforcing of the idea that women don’t really belong in the workforce by holding female applicants to the ridiculous standard of “will never marry or have children.” The losses have already been staggering.
It saddens me deeply to see Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy, what she fought for her entire life, teetering on the precipice. But you and I have it in our power to stop that from happening. It’s not going to come at the ballot box alone, but in the decisions we make every day, in what we communicate to our daughters and sons about the value women hold and offer, in our conduct as business leaders, managers, or hiring officers. These are decisions that we make day by day, you and I, to embody our secular credos. The rollback we’re already seeing didn’t begin in the Supreme Court, the halls of Congress, or the White House. Instead, it took root in millions of daily decisions by people in the position to decide them.
I don’t know what the future holds, and it’s not my place to try and say. We may not have a reliable path to codify our values into law or before a sympathetic court. But we do have our lives, and our choices. Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t start on the Supreme Court. She started by organizing, pushing back against arbitrary values, fighting for what she (and all of us) deserved, and forcing others to adapt to her by the sheer power of her brilliant and dedicated mind. But we don’t have to be as notorious as RBG to effect change in the world. If we commit ourselves to the wellbeing and advancement of women in the workplace and beyond, we will be doing our part, small it may be, to build this better world she could see twinkling in the distance.
We can do it.
Follow me on LinkedIn.
Liz Elting
I am a global CEO, entrepreneur, business leader, linguaphile, philanthropist, feminist, and mother. After living, studying, and working in five countries across the globe, and quitting a particularly nightmarish job, I decided it was time to chart my own future. Driven by a passion for language and cultural diversity, and a vision to break down boundaries, forge new paths forward, and connect people and businesses across the globe, I founded my dream company out of an NYU dorm room. Today, that dorm-room startup is the world’s largest privately-owned language solutions company, with over $500 million in revenue, 4,000 employees, 11,000 clients, and offices in more than 90 cities around the globe. As for me, I’m still fueled by a passion for breaking down boundaries – not only geographically, culturally, and technologically – but also in the workplace for other entrepreneurial women working toward their dreams and building a better tomorrow. You can follow me on Twitter @LizElting.
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