Meg Waite Clayton: Sandra Day O'Connor's Wider Message

Meg Waite Clayton is the author of three novels, most recently "The Four Ms. Bradwells." She practiced merger and acquisition law at an L.A. firm.

After his first argument before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, one prominent Southern lawyer was certain the Supreme Court would rule in his favor — because, he said, she was "flirting" with him. The comment speaks volumes about the speaker, but it also says something about the person who weaved her way through a male-dominated world to become the first female justice 30 years ago today, and served 25 years on the court.

O'Connor wasn't chosen because she looked the part, but the fact that her pearls and lavender suits with skirts wouldn't alarm the public wasn't inconsequential. "It was simply a matter of political reality that … a woman had to appear and act 'feminine,'" she has said. "People gave up their traditional notions only grudgingly."

She worked as a lawyer first at a county district attorney's office, having been offered only a legal secretary's job at private firms despite graduating near the top of her class at Stanford Law School. She followed her husband overseas when he finished school. She had her first child three days after being sworn in to the Arizona bar and then, because private Arizona law firms were no more hospitable to women than California ones, she opened her own firm.

She spent five years on the "mommy track" when she lost her sitter and couldn't work child-care miracles, using the time to get more involved in politics and the Junior League. She has said it never occurred to her or her husband that he might stay home while she worked....