On July 7, 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced his nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor for the position of U.S. Supreme Court justice -- a landmark for women. A °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹Ù·½ÍøÖ· poll conducted 10 days later found 86% of Americans saying they approved of a woman serving on the high court.
Jul 17-20, 1981 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Approve | 86 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Disapprove | 8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
No opinion | 6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹Ù·½ÍøÖ· |
Further, although 27% of Americans had no opinion about O'Connor's qualifications, almost everyone else -- 69% -- thought the Arizona Court of Appeals judge was "qualified to serve on the Supreme Court." Just 4% disagreed.
These reactions represented a revolution in attitudes toward women compared with what °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹Ù·½ÍøÖ· measured in 1938, days after President Franklin Roosevelt nominated his solicitor general -- Stanley Forman Reed -- for a high court vacancy. Only 37% of Americans then told °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹Ù·½ÍøÖ· they would favor the appointment of "a woman lawyer" to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1945, fewer than half (47%) said they would approve of having "a capable woman on the Supreme Court."
Thirty-five years after O'Connor earned the historic nomination that would make her the first woman on the Supreme Court -- or "FWOTSC," -- and nearly a decade after members of the 110th Congress elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House in 2007, Hillary Clinton is in a position to break the ultimate glass ceiling for women, the one leading to the Oval Office. Since 2011, °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹Ù·½ÍøÖ· has consistently found more than nine in 10 Americans saying they would vote for a for president.
These data can be found in .
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