Along with many others (not just women, but many women), the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and all the articles and memorials to her life and contributions to our country have been inspiring to me. It’s been a glimmer of beauty in the midst of what have been some troubling times.

I’ve been a bit of an RBG fan for a while. I thought I knew a fair amount about her—I’d seen the movie and documentary on her life. But I learned new things that I hadn’t picked up or remembered along the way.

When she and her husband Marty went to Oklahoma for his military service, she took the civil service test and was offered a job as a claims adjuster. But when they found out that she was pregnant, they withdrew the offer and made her a clerk typist, a job way below her tested abilities. But she accepted it, not challenging it, and considered it as “that’s the way things are.” That continued to be her perspective even as she was challenged for taking up a spot at Harvard Law School when asked to justify why she should take up a spot that could have gone to a man.

What changed her viewpoint about accepting “that’s the way things are?” She had the opportunity to go to Sweden to work on a project to study the Swedish justice system. While there she encountered a sitting judge who was eight months pregnant! This was surprising to her because this was a time in the U.S. when if you were a teacher and you began to “show” you had to quit. She encountered a much more egalitarian society with regards to women and it caused her to question “that’s just the way things are” and to imagine a better way.