"If I stumbled badly in doing the job, I think it would have made life more difficult for women, and that was a great concern of mine and still is"
About this Quote
O'Connor is naming a pressure that rarely gets admitted in elite spaces: the first woman in the room is never just an individual. She’s a test case. The line is built around a quiet, conditional terror - "If I stumbled badly" - that reveals how fragile her margin for error felt, and how asymmetrically that error would be interpreted. A mediocre male justice can be forgettable; a mediocre first female justice risks becoming evidence.
The specific intent is almost managerial in its restraint. O'Connor isn’t declaring herself a feminist icon; she’s describing a duty of care, a kind of professional guardianship. That’s the subtext that makes it sting: she’s aware her performance would be converted into a story about women’s competence, not just her own. "Made life more difficult for women" is a plainspoken diagnosis of institutional sexism as downstream consequence - hiring decisions, promotion pipelines, credibility in courtrooms and boardrooms, the unspoken "we tried that once" logic.
Context matters here. Appointed in 1981, O'Connor entered a Supreme Court still coded as a male sanctuary of intellect and authority. Her jurisprudence was often cautious, incremental, coalition-minded - qualities critics sometimes read as lack of ideology, but that also map onto the realities of being hyper-visible. The sentence’s final twist - "and still is" - refuses the comforting narrative of progress completed. It frames representation not as victory lap, but as ongoing risk management: succeed, or be used as a reason to shut the door behind you.
The specific intent is almost managerial in its restraint. O'Connor isn’t declaring herself a feminist icon; she’s describing a duty of care, a kind of professional guardianship. That’s the subtext that makes it sting: she’s aware her performance would be converted into a story about women’s competence, not just her own. "Made life more difficult for women" is a plainspoken diagnosis of institutional sexism as downstream consequence - hiring decisions, promotion pipelines, credibility in courtrooms and boardrooms, the unspoken "we tried that once" logic.
Context matters here. Appointed in 1981, O'Connor entered a Supreme Court still coded as a male sanctuary of intellect and authority. Her jurisprudence was often cautious, incremental, coalition-minded - qualities critics sometimes read as lack of ideology, but that also map onto the realities of being hyper-visible. The sentence’s final twist - "and still is" - refuses the comforting narrative of progress completed. It frames representation not as victory lap, but as ongoing risk management: succeed, or be used as a reason to shut the door behind you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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