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The story of Lilly Ledbetter being paid less simply for being a woman became a story that would resonate with many women across the United States – and the start of a decades-long effort to pay women equally. In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter started working as a shift manager and area manager at a local Goodyear plant. Like many workers at the time, she signed a company contract that prevented her from discussing wages with her co-workers.

For nearly 20 years, Ledbetter was unaware that her employer paid her far less for the same work as her male peers. It was not until 1998 that she discovered the pay difference, through an anonymous tip, that her male co-workers with the same title received significantly higher salaries.

Ledbetter’s journey to win justice for herself, and other underpaid working women would not only bring her case all the way to the Supreme Court but would take a significant step to closing the wage gap in the United States.

Although the jury in her first trial ruled in her favor, the Supreme Court’s final decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., 550 U.S. 618 (2007) ruled that she only had 180 days from the initial date that she received an unfair paycheck to make a claim. Going forward, this ruling would severely restrict the time period for filing complaints for unequal pay and barred pay discrimination victims’ right to relief.

Equal pay advocates fought long and hard and the Senate finally passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would become the first bill President Obama signed into law. The Act ensures that employers could no longer continue to conceal and profit from their discriminatory practices. The law established that each discriminatory paycheck is actionable under the Equal Employment Opportunity laws, regardless of when the discrimination began.

While the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has allowed more workers to challenge pay discrimination, there is still much more to be done. The punishing wage gap continues to prevail fifteen years later. In 2009, women working full time, year round were typically paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. Today, that figure is 84 cents, resulting in a gap of $9,990. Despite the wage gap shrinking by 7 cents, the wage gap is wider for women of color: on average among full time, year round workers Native American women are typically paid as little as 59 cents, Latinas 57 cents, Black women 67 cents, and Asian American and Pacific Islander women 80 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.

The equal pay narrative is often framed as a women’s issue, however equal pay impacts all workers. Opponents of equal pay argue that workers, specifically women, earn less because of the careers women choose, or because women lack the ability to negotiate higher pay, or that women simply take too much time out of the workforce for “personal” reasons.

When women are paid less, our economy also suffers the cost. Women employed in the United States lose a combined average total of nearly $1.6 trillion every year due to the wage gap, causing profound loss to the overall economy. These essentially stolen wages mean women and their families have less money to support themselves, care for their families and communities, and save and invest for the future. For example, if the United States eliminated the gender wage gap, a working woman could have enough money for approximately:

• Nearly 64 weeks of food;
• Almost 7 more months of mortgage and utilities payments;
• About 9 months of rent; or
• Nearly 13 months of additional child care.

These critical data demonstrate why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was an essential step towards closing the wage gap. We still need consistent gender pay data collection to continue to identify wage gaps across industries and address pay discrimination. Workers are also in need of legislation such as the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) to eliminate loopholes in the Equal Pay Act, and enhance the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act protections by helping break harmful patterns of pay discrimination by:

1. Protecting more workers from unequal pay based on one’s sex characteristics, gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy.
2. Making it harder for employers to justify wage discrimination;
3. Prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages to their colleagues;
4. Offering employers assistance to help them analyze their pay data and ensure they are not engaging in discriminatory practices.

Over 40 years after she began her role at Goodyear, Ledbetter is still fighting to end the pay discrimination she faced decades earlier. In 2018, she said, “We still are not paid equally. And if you believe that it’s a myth, do the math.” The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act marked an important step on the road to fair pay, but it’s time for Congress to do the math on what the wage gap is still costing us and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.