May Every Woman Find Her Marty Ginsburg

[CousinIT]

https://www.vogue.com/article/may-every-woman-find-her-marty-ginsburg-rbg

My maternal grandmother was born in 1932 in Queens, one year before Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Brooklyn. She was married in 1955 and, like many Irish-Catholic families then, she and my grandfather went on to have many children—seven, in their case. He worked in construction and she did not work outside the home, but she volunteered at church and at the polls, and eagerly took an office job after her sixth child entered grade school, happy for the slice of independence. According to family lore, she was crushed to leave her position when she found out she was pregnant again.

My grandma’s is an entirely common story for a woman born in the ’30s. That Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life diverged so remarkably from the rest of her generation seems to be a function of two things. First, there was the fact that her mother, Celia Bader, left behind a college fund when she died of cancer the day before Ruth’s graduation; then, there was the man she married: Martin “Marty” Ginsburg, a proto-feminist unicorn who supported her dreams and ambitions along with his own.

In the outpouring of remembrances following RBG’s death on Friday, it’s become increasingly clear that Marty was Ruth’s not-so-secret weapon; that she may never have been able to reach her full, glorious and iconic potential had she not had a husband who ranked her career as equal to his own. In a career full of legal battles dismantling gender discrimination, Ruth’s own love story may be the best case study for proving the power of an egalitarian partnership.

“If she wants children and a job, a woman’s life is only as good as the man or woman she marries,” Caitlin Moran writes in her new book, More Than a Woman. “All too often women are marrying their glass ceilings.” By this metric, one can understand at least part of why Ginsburg said that meeting Marty was “by far the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me.”

[tblue37]

1. "Marrying their glass ceilings." Perfect! nt

[July]

2. Martin Ginsburg was a gem, and a great husband.

But I was fortunate to have a mother born in 1931 who accomplished a great deal without a Marty. She didn’t rise to the height of a Supreme Court appointment, but at a time when almost all the mothers I knew did not work outside the home, my mother did, and rose in her chosen profession, despite her five children, who ranged in age from 5 to 9 when she left our father.

She was a strong, feisty woman who taught us (boys and girls) to work hard, think for ourselves, and stick up for each other. And she still managed to have a life of her own, traveling, dating, and spending time with our numerous relatives. She considered purchasing a car to be a sport (at which she excelled).

I bring up my mother to point out that some women had to or chose to have a career despite the lack of a Marty, who clearly was a paragon of a man and husband.