Lilly Ledbetter, the former Alabama factory executive whose lawsuit against her employer made her an icon of the equal pay movement and led to landmark wage discrimination legislation, has died at the age of 86.
Ledbetter's discovery that she was earning less than her male colleagues doing the same job at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant. in Alabama, led to her lawsuit, which ultimately failed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that she, too, had filed her complaint late.
The court ruled that workers must file lawsuits within six months of receiving discriminatory pay – in Ledbetter's case, years before she learned of the differences from an anonymous letter.
Two years later, former U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gave employees the right to sue within 180 days of receiving any discrimination paycheck, not just the first one.
“Lilly Ledbetter never wanted to be a pioneer or a household name. She simply wanted to be paid the same as men for her hard work,” Obama said in a statement on Monday.
“Lilly did what so many Americans have done before her: She set goals high for herself, and even higher goals for her children and grandchildren.”
According to a family statement quoted by the news website AL.com, Ledbetter died on Saturday of respiratory failure.
Ledbetter continued to campaign for equal pay for decades after winning a bill named after her. Last week, a film about her life starring Patricia Clarkson premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
A lasting legacy
In January, U.S. President Joe Biden marked the 15th anniversary of the law named in Ledbetter's honor by introducing new measures to help eliminate the gender pay gap, including a new rule prohibiting the federal government from considering an individual's current or past salary when determining salary. remuneration.
Ledbetter and other advocates have been frustrated for years that more comprehensive initiatives have stalled, including the Fair Pay Act, which would have strengthened the 1963 Equal Pay Act.
The sense of urgency among advocates deepened after last month's annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau showed the gender pay gap widened for the first time in 20 years.
In 2023, women working full-time in the U.S. earned 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, up from 84 cents in 2022.
Advocates have already been frustrated by the fact that improving the pay gap has largely stalled over the past 20 years, even though women have achieved success in leadership positions and earned college degrees faster than men.
The pay gap persists
Experts say the reasons for the persistent disparities are multi-faceted, including the overrepresentation of women in lower-paying industries and a weak childcare system that forces many women to withdraw from their careers during their peak earning years.
In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Ledbetter wrote an op-ed in The New York Times detailing the harassment she faced as a manager at a Goodyear factory and drawing a link between workplace sexual harassment and discrimination payroll.
“She was tireless,” said Emily Martin, program director at the National Women's Law Center, which worked closely with Ledbetter.
“She was always willing to lend her voice, show up to make a film, write an article. She was always ready to act.”
Ledbetter was a manager at the Goodyear plant in Gadsden, Alabama, and had worked there for 19 years when she received an anonymous message saying she was earning significantly less than three of her colleagues.
She filed the lawsuit in 1999 and initially won $3.8 million in federal court in back pay and damages. She never received the money after ultimately losing her case in the Supreme Court.
Although the law named after her did not directly address the gender pay gap, Martin said it set an important precedent “for ensuring that not only do we have the promise of equal pay on the books, but we have a way to enforce the law ” .”
“He's truly an inspiration because he shows us that losing doesn't mean you can't win,” Martin said. “We know her name because she lost, badly, badly, and she came back from it and worked until her death to turn that loss into real gains for women across the country.”
