Female empowerment
The main message of the biographical book is to inform the reader of the impact of both Ginsburg and O’Connor on the political and legal scene during their respective periods as Supreme Court Justices. Though both took the same career path, they were inherently very different individuals. This is highlighting the fact that female empowerment comes in many different forms and there is no one ideal of what it is.
The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court, prior to O’Connor joining, was purely male-dominated and highly reluctant to bring women into their ranks. O’Connor was the first to make such an achievement but Hirshman seems to criticize how much she actually did in her role as a Supreme Court judge. Indeed, unlike Ginsburg, who was driven by her desire for a change in women’s rights, O’Connor was determined to stay in her own lane and was considered the ‘ideal’ kind of female that that the court wanted.
Social status of women
Both Ginsburg and O’Connor were well-bred and born into affluent families. Despite their social stature, they too were limited by their gender. Despite this, both advocated for women to enter higher education and pursue professions that were deemed out of the norm for women. Moreover, they faced many obstacles to achieving their status as Supreme Court, mainly through the inherent sexism and discrimination of the laws and Court’s at the time.