Introduction for Chinese Translation of Notorious RBG

I visited China first in 1978 as one of twelve members of an American Bar Association delegation,the first to visit the People's Republic. There were then no lawyers in the country; some with preCultural Revolution law degrees were called legal workers. All the law faculties had been shut down during the Cultural Revolution. In 1978, the Beijing law faculty had just reopened. Comprehensive law codes had not yet been formulated.

I next visited China in 2005, as a guest of the Supreme People's Court. What enormous changes I witnessed! Laws, law faculties, and lawyers had proliferated. The term “lawyer” was no longer viewed with suspicion.

In meetings with women's organizations in 1978, I found a remarkable resemblance to women's situation in my own country—moving past the official government policy in China restricting the number of children each family could bear. Yes, two wage earners in a family had become the common pattern. But at home, women carried prime responsibility for housekeeping and child care.“He should do more than take out the garbage,” the women complained. True equality would not be achieved, we agreed, until family joys and burdens are shared evenly by both parents.

By 2005, in both countries, there was greater recognition that men as well as women bear responsibility for home and family life. But there remained—and remains today—some distance to go in China and in the United States in that regard.

I am honored to have Notorious RBG published in Chinese translation, and hopeful that readers will find in it some things familiar and some things uplifting

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

June 2018