Women’s rights set to weigh heavily

Views from around the world. These opinions are not necessarily shared by Stuff newspapers.

To fully appreciate the impact that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had on women’s rights, it’s essential to look back on the blatantly discriminatory reality in America at the time she was one of only nine women admitted to Harvard Law School in 1956. The dean invited those women to a private dinner, she once recalled, and asked: ‘‘Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?’’

Chief Justice John Roberts noted that in a memorial service on Wednesday. Ginsburg ‘‘won famous victories that helped move our nation closer to equal justice under law, to the extent that women are now a majority in law schools, not simply a handful’’, he said.

Discrimination based on sex was entirely legal at the time, but Ginsburg refused to give up. She wound up co-founding the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, a job that would give her six opportunities to argue gender-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. She won five.

Some of the most basic questions of women’s rights – the right to control their own bodies – will weigh heavily in the process of filling her vacancy. The fact that male-dominated legislatures around the country, including Missouri, continue to apply a different standard between men and women underscores how much work remains to be done.