Another Factor Said to Sway Judges to Rule for Women’s Rights: A Daughter
The new study considered about 2,500 votes by 224 federal appeals court judges. “Having at least one daughter,” it concluded, “corresponds to a 7 percent increase in the proportion of cases in which a judge will vote in a feminist direction.”
.. Members of Congress with daughters are more likely to cast liberal votes, particularly on abortion rights, one study found. Another study showed that British parents with daughters were more likely to vote for left-wing parties, while ones with sons were more likely to vote for right-wing parties.
.. Chief Justice Rehnquist, who had long championed states’ rights, had not been expected to be sympathetic to the idea.
Instead, he wrote the majority opinion sustaining the law. It was, he said, meant to address “the pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work.”
Chief Justice Rehnquist was 78 when he wrote that. He died a couple of years later, in 2005. In the term he wrote the opinion, he sometimes left work early to pick up his granddaughters from school.