A feminist trailblazer and one of America's most prominent justices died on Friday, aged 87. Even as she battled pancreatic cancer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not give up the fight for equality. She remained committed to her position as one of nine judges on the US Supreme Court, the country's foremost tribunal, until the day she died. She would often joke that there would only be enough women on America's highest court "when there are nine", an anecdote that perfectly illustrates her dedication to furthering women's rights.
Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She was nominated for the position in 1993 by then-president Bill Clinton. A self-made woman hailing from a modest Jewish family, Ginsburg had to fight discrimination early on in her life. Despite having graduated top of her class from Columbia Law School in 1959, she struggled to find employment.
In fact, she had been demoted from her previous job in 1954 when she became pregnant. "Not a law firm in the entire city of New York would employ me," she said. "I struck out on three grounds: I was Jewish, a woman and a mother."
Since those days, Ginsburg made it her life’s cause to have sexist laws repealed. In 1971, she was only 38 when she won her first case before the Supreme Court in Reed v Reed, successfully ending a policy that gave men preference over women as estate executors. The following year she co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and became the first tenured woman professor at the prestigious Columbia Law School. As the ACLU’s general counsel, she launched gender-discrimination cases with the aim of ending sexism in American law. Of the six cases she brought before the Supreme Court, she won an astounding five.
Her fight for equality, however, was not reserved to the public sphere. In her own personal life, she shared household work and childcare equally with her late husband, Martin, who also took on most of the cooking. Anti-feminists often make the argument that a woman's success inevitably comes at her family’s expense. Yet Ginsburg’s family life is proof to the contrary. Her biggest supporter was her late husband, who lobbied for her to be appointed at the Supreme Court. On his deathbed, he wrote a letter to his wife saying: “I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met.”
Ginsburg was a force to be reckoned with when it came to advancing women’s rights, yet much remains to be done to achieve equality. For instance, a recent report by the World Economic Forum found that “no country, including the top-ranked ones have yet achieved gender parity in wages”. In 2017, the “Me Too” movement revealed the extent to which men in power, in Hollywood and beyond, can exploit their position to take advantage of women.
Despite having graduated top of her class from Columbia Law School, she struggled to find employment
Ginsburg has inspired a new generation of women's rights advocates to follow in her footsteps.
Her passing, however, has created a political storm that has nothing to do with the values she stood for during her lifetime. Right-wing politicians hoping the progressive judge's seat will be filled with a conservative appointee have rushed intoa partisan debate. But now is not the time for political calculations. People of all sides should come together to celebrate Ginsburg's achievements and honour the memory of a woman who changed the lives of millions of Americans for the better and inspired many more across the world.
Jewel of the Expo 2020
252 projectors installed on Al Wasl dome
13.6km of steel used in the structure that makes it equal in length to 16 Burj Khalifas
550 tonnes of moulded steel were raised last year to cap the dome
724,000 cubic metres is the space it encloses
Stands taller than the leaning tower of Pisa
Steel trellis dome is one of the largest single structures on site
The size of 16 tennis courts and weighs as much as 500 elephants
Al Wasl means connection in Arabic
World’s largest 360-degree projection surface
Ipaf in numbers
Established: 2008
Prize money: $50,000 (Dh183,650) for winners and $10,000 for those on the shortlist.
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.
The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.
Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.
However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.
Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.
