i love learning new things. new words, new skills, new information. i learn something new every single day, even if i don’t always realize it at the time.

one thing i’ve learned more and more about this week is ruth bader ginsburg’s time spent in sweden and how it impacted her future work on gender equality cases.

a lot of the podcasts i listen to have had episodes this week about rbg’s legacy in gender discrimination cases and have mentioned the project she worked on in sweden in the early 60s. until yesterday, i never knew about this time in her life.

after she finished law school and had been blackballed from new york city firms because she was a woman, she spent some time working on a civil procedure project in sweden and had the opportunity to see firsthand how much further along swedes were in terms of gender equality.

in sweden women held government positions, they made up larger portions of higher education classes, and they didn’t get fired for getting pregnant. women were allowed many more freedoms than they were in the states, and they were held in much higher regard.

for rbg, this was the first time she had seen this, and it shaped her future career drastically. in many ways, her experience in sweden is the reason she became the trailblazing lawyer and justice i saw in my lifetime.

and yet yesterday was the first time i’d heard about this. i knew about her time in law school, i knew about her graduating top of her class from columbia, and i knew after not getting hired she became a law professor at rutgers. but i knew nothing about this significant part of her life, and i wish it was more widely spoken about.

like i said, i learn something new everyday.

xx