Lilly Ledbetter, an icon of the fight for equal pay, has died at 86

NEW YORK– Lilly Ledbetter, a former factory manager in Alabama whose lawsuit against her employer made her an icon of the equal pay movement and led to groundbreaking legislation in the field of wage discriminationdied at the age of 86.

Ledbetter’s discovery that she earned less than her male colleagues because she did the same work at Goodyear Tire & The Rubber Co. factory in Alabama led to her lawsuit, which ultimately failed when the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that she had filed her complaint too late. The court ruled that employees must file a lawsuit within six months of first receiving a discriminatory salary — in Ledbetter’s case, years before she learned about the discrepancy through an anonymous letter.

Two years later, former President Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gave employees the right to sue for discrimination within 180 days of receiving any paycheck, not just the first.

“Lilly Ledbetter never intended to become a pioneer or a household name. She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work,” Obama said in a statement on Monday. “Lilly did what so many Americans have done before her: set the bar high for herself and even higher for her children and grandchildren.”

Ledbetter died Saturday of respiratory failure, according to a statement from her family cited by Alabama news site AL.com.

Ledbetter continued to campaign for equal pay for decades after winning the law named after her. A film about her life starring Patricia Clarkson premiered last week at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

The team behind the film ‘LILLY’ has released a statement of condolence on social media.

“Lilly was an ordinary woman who achieved extraordinary things, and her story continues to motivate us all. We will miss her,” the team said.

In January, President Joe Biden marked the 15th anniversary of the law named after Ledbetter with new measures to help close the gender pay gap, including a new rule that prohibits the federal government from considering someone’s current or past wages when determining their salary.

Ledbetter had advocated the measure in a January op-ed for Ms. Magazine, co-written with Deborah Vagins, director of the advocacy group Equal Pay Today. But Ledbetter and other advocates have been frustrated for years as broader initiatives have stalled, including the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

The sense of urgency among proponents became even greater after a annual report from the Census Bureau found last month that the gender pay gap widened for the first time in two decades. In 2023, women working full-time earned 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, up from 84 cents in 2022. Even before that, advocates were frustrated that the wage gap had improved. has largely come to a standstill over the past twenty years despite women making gains in the C-suite and obtaining college degrees at a higher rate than men. Experts say the reasons for the persistent gap are multifaceted, including women’s overrepresentation in lower-paying industries and the weak childcare system that pushes many women to take a step back in their careers during their highest-earning years.

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Ledbetter launched wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in which she describes the harassment she faced as a manager at the Goodyear factory and draws a link between sexual harassment in the workplace and pay discrimination.

“She was tireless,” said Emily Martin, chief program officer at the National Women’s Law Center, who worked closely with Ledbetter. “She was always ready to lend her voice, to make a video, to write an op-ed. She was always ready to go.”

Ledbetter was a manager at the Goodyear plant in Gadsden, Alabama, and had been working for 19 years when she received an anonymous note saying she was being paid significantly less than three male colleagues. She filed a lawsuit in 1999 and initially won $3.8 million in back pay and damages from a federal court. She never received the money after ultimately losing her case in the Supreme Court.

Although the law she named does not directly address the gender pay gap, Martin said it set an important precedent “to ensure that not only do we have the promise of equal pay on the books, but that we also have a way have to enforce the law. .”

“She is truly an inspiration to show us how losing doesn’t mean you can’t win,” Martin said. “We know her name because she lost, and she lost a lot, and she kept coming back from it and kept working until the day she died to turn that loss into real gain for women across the country.”

While the wage gap is wider among women of color.

Full-time working is being expanded year after year for the first time in twenty years, according to an American newspaper annual report from the Census Bureau.