RBG Is Why I Do What I Do

I really didn’t realize I was a feminist.

I think I was a little angry when I was growing up.
I grew up when there were a lot of things that girls weren’t supposed to do.

My elementary school didn’t allow girls to wear pants.
That sure cut down on a lot of fun at recess.

There weren’t many sports teams for girls.
I had never even touched a soccer ball before I started playing college soccer  since my high school didn’t fund a women’s soccer team.
The books we read pointed out the three careers for women… secretary, nurse and teacher.

I wanted to sell steel when I grew up.
Because that’s when men do.

There wasn’t anyone telingl me that I wasn’t good enough or tough enough to work in the steel industry.
(I grew up in Pittsburgh, which had a huge steel industry presence.)
No one said I couldn’t sell steel.

It was all subtext.
No one told me that I couldn’t, because no one ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Why ask a girl what she is going to be when you know there are only three likely options?

No one ever talked about being a feminist.
Or making things equal for women.

Not in my circles.
All those Ruth Bader Ginsburg wins were reported in the newspaper.

I thought they were reporting about
wrongs that were finally being made right.
I thought adults were waking up and seeing the glaring errors.

Women were treated by law differently than men.

Then the law gaps started to close.

VMI was forced by the Supreme Court to change the rule that excluded women from enrolling.

Equal pay legislation of 2009 paved the way for legal prosecution for unequal pay.

These were all gifts that I took for granted, because they happened when I thought all adults were like minded except for a few outliers. It was a time when I thought the collective minds of the people wanted to make things fair.
I know better now. 

I know Ruth stuck her neck out and took a stand.
Change is hard for everyone who has an advantage.
And that has made me step up and say my piece.
Because I believe we can make a difference.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a leader.
And helping women become equal with men in their money lives is why I do what I do.
I can look to her example, with grace and poise, at speaking about gender equality.

Women, if you have a credit card in your own name, if you have your own credit history, if you have leased property or bought property in your own name, if you have consented to your own medical procedure, or if you played a sport in school, you can thank Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
I have done all six of those things.
And not thought a thing about it.

Because RBG was who she was.
And I had the gift of thinking that’s just how things are.

OF COURSE I would be able to do these things as a woman.

Because I am just as good as a man.
It is time for women to step up and handle their investing.
Earn as much as men.
Talk about their money without shame.
Think about money and power.
It is time for women to have the same confidence with money that men have.
I do not have the skills to so beautifully articulate oral arguments or write dissents.

But I do have the skills to help women own their own power, use their money to get what they want, and have confidence with money.

We all do what we can do.

I don’t sell steel.
​​​​​​​But if I wanted to I would.

Let me close with a Maya Angelou poem that struck me as a salute to RBG this week…

WHEN GREAT TREES FALL

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory,

suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality,

bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink,

wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance

of dark, coldcaves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.