It took U.S. presidents almost a century and a half to appoint a female federal judge. In 1928, 139 years after the Judiciary Act of 1789 established the court system and five years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Genevieve Rose Cline to the U.S. Customs Court.
For over 50 years after Cline’s historic appointment, women still occupied less than 5 percent of all federal judgeships, according to the Federal Judicial Center. Another 35 years passed until a quarter of all federal judges were women — still a small minority.
Gender distribution of sitting members of the federal judiciary
Female
Male
0%
100
1900
0.4% of all
federal judges
were women
Genevieve Rose Cline
becomes the first
woman appointed
to a federal court.
1920
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
is born.
1940
0.4
1960
5.3
Ginsburg is appointed
to the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
1980
1993
Ginsburg is appointed
to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
2000
9.7
2020
0%
100
Female
Male
0%
100
1900
0.4% of all
federal judges
were women
Genevieve Rose Cline
becomes the first
woman appointed
to a federal court.
1920
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
is born.
1940
0.4
1960
5.3
Ginsburg is appointed
to the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
1980
1993
Ginsburg is appointed to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
2000
9.7
2020
0%
100
1900
1920
1928
1933
1960
1980
1993
2000
2020
0%
FEMALE JUDGES
20
MALE JUDGES
40
0.4% of all
federal judges
were women
9.7
0.4
5.3
Ginsburg is
appointed to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Genevieve Rose Cline
becomes the first
woman appointed
to a federal court.
Ruth Bader
Ginsburg
is born in
Brooklyn.
Ginsburg is
appointed to the
U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District
of Columbia Circuit.
60
80
100
1900
1920
1928
1933
1940
1960
1980
1993
2000
2020
0%
FEMALE JUDGES
20
MALE JUDGES
40
0.4% of all
federal judges
were women
0.4
9.7
5.3
Ginsburg is appointed
to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Genevieve Rose Cline
becomes the first
woman appointed
to a federal court.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
is born in Brooklyn.
Ginsburg is
appointed to the
U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District
of Columbia Circuit.
60
80
100
1900
1920
1928
1933
1940
1960
1980
1993
2000
2020
0%
20
MALE JUDGES
0.4% of all
federal judges
were women
0.4
5.3
9.7
40
Ginsburg is appointed to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
is born in Brooklyn.
Ginsburg is
appointed to the
U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District
of Columbia.
Genevieve Rose Cline
becomes the first
woman appointed
to a federal court.
60
80
100
Ginsburg was born in 1933, when only 0.4 percent of all sitting federal judges were women. Later in life, her trailblazing work with the American Civil Liberties Union throughout the 1970s in breaking down gender barriers — along with her appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — helped start a period of change. By the day she took the oath of office for her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly 10 percent of all federal judges were women.
[Ruth Bader Ginsburg, second woman to serve on the high court, was a role model for female lawyers]
But it has been slow progress. Today, women still make up only 27 percent of all federal judges. Change has been gradual partly because the path to a federal judgeship is so long.
“If there was sexism in the admission to law schools in the 1980s, it’s going to affect how many women judges we have today,” said Amanda Frost, professor of law and government at the American University Washington College of Law.
Federal judges receive lifetime appointments, usually following years of education and work at law firms. Many judges appointed today started their careers before Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second-ever female Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. That long arc means gender discrimination and sexist hiring practices from that time period are probably still a factor in the judiciary’s skewed distribution today.
Gender distribution of newly confirmed federal judges per year
Female
Male
50
100
0%
1977
Carter
1981
Reagan
1989
Bush
1993
1993, the year Ginsburg became a
Supreme Court justice, saw a
large increase in the number
of female federal judges
appointed.
Clinton
2001
Bush
2009
President Barack Obama was
the first president to appoint
more women than men as
federal judges.
Obama
2017
Trump
2020
Some appointments in inauguration years were
made by the previous president
Female
Male
50
100
0%
1977
Carter
1981
Reagan
1989
Bush
1993
1993, the year Ginsburg became a
Supreme Court justice, saw a large
increase in the number of female
federal judges appointed.
Clinton
2001
Bush
2009
President Barack Obama was the first
president to appoint more women than
men as federal judges.
Obama
2017
Trump
2020
Some appointments in inauguration years were
made by the previous president
0%
FEMALE JUDGES
MALE JUDGES
50
1993, the year Ginsburg became a
Supreme Court justice, saw a large
increase in the number of female
federal judges appointed.
President Barack Obama was the
first president to appoint more
women than men as federal judges.
Carter
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Bush
Obama
Trump
100
1977
1981
1989
1993
2001
2009
2020
Some appointments in inauguration years were made by the previous president.
0%
FEMALE JUDGES
MALE JUDGES
50
1993, the year Ginsburg became a
Supreme Court justice, saw a large
increase in the number of female
federal judges appointed.
President Barack Obama was the
first president to appoint more
women than men as federal judges.
Carter
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Bush
Obama
Trump
100
1977
1981
1989
1993
2001
2009
2020
Some appointments in inauguration years were made by the previous president.
0%
FEMALE JUDGES
MALE JUDGES
50
1993, the year Ginsburg became a
Supreme Court justice, saw a large
increase in the number of female
federal judges appointed.
President Barack Obama was the first
president to appoint more women than
men as federal judges.
Carter
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Bush
Obama
Trump
100
1977
1981
1989
1993
2001
2009
2017
2020
Some appointments in inauguration years were made by the previous president.
Every year, the Senate votes to confirm the federal judges a president nominates. During part of the Obama administration, newly confirmed female federal judges outnumbered newly confirmed male judges for the first time in U.S. history. This increase did not continue in the Trump administration.
[Where GOP senators stand on quickly filling Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat]
Nearly two centuries after America’s founding, the country finally saw its first female Supreme Court justice. President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to a federal court just a year earlier.
Supreme Court justices in the past 40 years
Dem.
GOP
Male justice appointed by a...
1980
O’Connor
1985
1990
1995
Ginsburg
2000
2005
2010
Sotomayor
Kagan
2015
2020
Democrat
Republican
Male justice appointed by a...
1980
O’Connor
Reagan appointed
the first woman
to serve on
the Supreme
Court in 1981.
1985
1990
Ginsburg
1995
2000
2005
When Samuel A.
Alito Jr. replaced
O’Connor,
Ginsburg
became the
only woman
on the Supreme
Court.
2010
Sotomayor
Kagan
Sonia
Sotomayor
became the
first female
Supreme
Court justice
of color and
the first
Hispanic
member
of the court.
Obama’s
appointments
of Sotomayor
and Elena
Kagan brought
a record three
women to
the court.
2015
2020
Democrat
Republican
Male justice appointed by a...
1980
O’Connor
Reagan appointed
the first woman
to serve on
the Supreme
Court in 1981.
1985
1990
Ginsburg
1995
2000
2005
When Samuel A.
Alito Jr. replaced
O’Connor,
Ginsburg
became the
only woman
on the Supreme
Court.
2010
Sotomayor
Sonia Sotomayor
became the
first female
Supreme
Court justice
of color and
the first
Hispanic
member
of the court.
Kagan
Obama’s
appointments
of Sotomayor
and Elena
Kagan
brought a
record three
women to
the court.
2015
2020
Male justice appointed by a...
Democrat
Republican
White
Marshall
Blackmun
Rehnquist
Powell
Stevens
Stewart
Brennan
Warren
1980
O’Connor
Reagan appointed
the first woman
to serve on
the Supreme
Court in 1981.
1985
Scalia
Kennedy
Souter
1990
Thomas
Breyer
Ginsburg
1995
2000
Roberts
2005
When Samuel A.
Alito Jr. replaced
O’Connor,
Ginsburg
became the
only woman
on the Supreme
Court.
Alito
2010
Sotomayor
Sonia Sotomayor
became the
first female
Supreme
Court justice
of color and
the first
Hispanic
member
of the court.
Kagan
Obama’s
appointments
of Sotomayor
and Elena
Kagan
brought a
record three
women to
the court.
2015
Gorsuch
Kavanaugh
2020
Lorem ipsum
Since Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in, three other women have become Supreme Court justices, Ginsburg being the first one to follow. All three of them have been appointed by Democratic presidents. But in that same period, three times more men have been confirmed for the same position.
Despite the judges confirmed during the Trump administration being over three-quarters male (including two White male Supreme Court justices), the president has said he will appoint a woman to replace Justice Ginsburg.
From left, Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a Women’s History Month event in 2015. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
[Is it too close to the election to confirm a Supreme Court nominee?]
Though the U.S. judiciary has come a long way, it is still far from equally representing women or non-binary genders. As Ginsburg famously said when talking about women in the Supreme Court at the University of Colorado in 2012, “When I’m sometimes asked, ‘When will there be enough?’ and I say, ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked, but there have been nine men and nobody ever raised a question about that.”
Reuben Fischer-Baum contributed to this report.
