On the recordJune 20, 2012
Our daughters' futures will be as bright as our sons'. That is the American promise. It is the American ideal-- that one's opportunity to prosper--one's economic security--depends not on one's gender but instead on one's work ethic--one's character--one's God-given talents. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was a made by Susan B. Anthony, who dedicated her life to women's suffrage and who famously said, shortly before her passing, that ``failure is impossible.'' History proved her right: 15 years later, women finally were given access to the ballot. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was made a generation later, by thousands of women who--under the banner of Rosie the Riveter--took to the factories and carried our national economy through a period of world war. That men and women will be treated equally in America is a promise that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, in 1960, was passed over for a Supreme Court clerkship because she was a woman. Undeterred, she went on to start the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, a platform from which she argued several landmark cases. In 1993, she was selected to serve as a justice on the very court that, years before, turned her away.…
