Jaylen Santana                                                                                                        February 7, 2021

Bus 311-1900                                                                                                             Prof. Buckler

Equal Rights in the US

In the film On The Basis of Sex we get a in depth view on the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her fight against gender discrimination for women in the 1960’s. We get to watch as Ruth fights her way through law school at Harvard and Colombia all while being one of the total nine women in her class. It is in doing this that we get to see her challenging the societal norm of a woman’s role in the world at that time.

Ruth did not let society stop her from achieving her goal of being a lawyer, despite being in an occupation that was by far dominated and respected as a male industry occupation. She was motivated by the injustices that were the law and demanded that her voice was heard among her colleagues and professors, which helped not deter her despite being turned down over twelve times by law firms because she was a woman. Her resilient spirit led her to overturn many laws that dealt with gender discrimination allowing women to live their lives more freely without being constrained to a certain lifestyle.

Although she had a profound impact on women’s rights there is still a lot of work to be done as women still suffer from gender discrimination to this day. A big current day inequality women deal with is, a wage gap within jobs that are shared with men. Women still make just 78 cents for every dollar that is earned by a man. Similar to Ruth, these women will earn less despite being just as qualified if not more qualified than their male counterpart. This is especially detrimental to all the women in our current day that have the job of providing for their family as single mothers.

Women injustice is still a looming issue in today’s world, but if it were not for Ruth starting the engine to demand change and equality, women would still be perceived as housewives and caregivers.