From the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center:
Lilly Ledbetter, a woman who tirelessly fought for nine years to earn a fair salary in the workplace, spent March 24 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. (APG) sharing her story as part of the installation’s celebration of Women’s History Month. Planned by the APG Federal Women’s Program committee, the event was sponsored by Team APG, the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) and the U.S. Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA).
“I’m not anyone special,” Ledbetter said, comparing herself to great women in history. “Rosa [Parks] stood up for her seat, I stood up for my pay.”
Her journey for equality began nearly two decades after taking a job at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., when Ledbetter learned she was earning less pay than her male counterparts. Citing the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Ledbetter sued the company claiming pay discrimination.
Though the courts originally awarded her $360,000, the decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007. Ultimately, Ledbetter received no compensation but she vowed to make a difference and fight for women, their families and future generations so others would not have to experience the hardships she had endured.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, a reporter asked Ledbetter if she understood defeat, to which she replied, “I understand defeat but I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something about it. I stood up for myself, my daughter, my granddaughter and all the other women in this country that have had to make tough choices and sometimes do without to support their families.”
In 2009, President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which expands women’s rights to fair compensation in the workplace.
Ledbetter is one of 35 people in history with a law named after her and the only person from Alabama. She believes that three things enabled her to persevere through her nearly nine-year journey — being a strong person, trusting in a higher power and having a family that supported her through it all.
“Ms. Ledbetter’s bravery, tenacity and perseverance through her ordeal should be commended,” said Eric Grove, acting chief of staff at AMSAA. “Her fight truly made a difference to our nation and has had a tremendous impact on our history.”
As a take away from her experience, Ledbetter encouraged women to be sure that they are compensated fairly, promoted when it’s deserved and offered all of the same training and advantages given to men. Additionally, she encouraged those present to take an interest in the nation’s politics and get to know their representatives to keep them accountable.
“I thank Washington for putting me in the history books,” Ledbetter said. “I didn’t get any money, but I got to make a difference in history.”
Later this year, Ledbetter will be inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in recognition of her fight for other women to receive fair pay.
“I’m awe struck with the energy, tenacity and sheer grit it took to do what Lilly has done for future generations,” ECBC Technical Director Joseph Wienand said.
Ledbetter advocates adhere to the belief that employers everywhere pay men more than women for the exact same work.
Yet these same advocates no doubt also support the Age Discrimination In Employment Act. Without it, they may argue, employers, who the advocates rightly say always seek the cheapest labor possible, would replace their older employees with younger ones who will accept lower wages in the same jobs. But the advocates must think employers suddenly don’t care about cheap labor when it comes to paying men more than women in the same jobs. In sum, the advocates believe employers would replace older workers with younger ones to save money, but will not replace men with women to save money.
No legislation yet has closed the gender wage gap — not the 1963 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, not Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, not the 1991 amendments to Title VII, not affirmative action, not diversity, not the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, not the countless state and local laws and regulations, not the horde of overseers at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission….. Nor would the Paycheck Fairness Act have worked.
That’s because pay-equity advocates, at no small financial cost to taxpayers and the economy, continue to overlook the effects of this female AND male behavior:
Despite the 40-year-old demand for women’s equal pay, millions of wives still choose to have no pay at all. In fact, according to Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of “The Secrets of Happily Married Women,” stay-at-home wives, including the childless who represent an estimated 10 percent, constitute a growing niche. “In the past few years,” he says in a CNN August 2008 report at http://tinyurl.com/6reowj, “many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home.” (“Census Bureau data show that 5.6 million mothers stayed home with their children in 2005, about 1.2 million more than did so a decade earlier….” at http://tinyurl.com/qqkaka. This may or may not reflect a higher percentage of women staying at home than in the previous decade. But if the percentage is higher, perhaps it’s because feminists and the media have told women for years that female workers are paid less than men in the same jobs, and so why bother working if they’re going to be penalized and humiliated for being a woman.)
As full-time mothers or homemakers, stay-at-home wives earn zero. How can they afford to do this while in many cases living in luxury? Because they’re supported by their husband.
Both feminists and the media miss — or ignore — what this obviously implies: If millions of wives can accept no wages and live as well as their husbands, millions of other wives can accept low wages, refuse overtime and promotions, take more unpaid days off, avoid uncomfortable wage-bargaining (http://tinyurl.com/45ecy7p) — all of which lower women’s average pay. They can do this because they are supported by a husband who must earn more than if he’d chosen never to marry. (Still, even many men who shun marriage, unlike women, feel their self worth is tied to their net worth.) This is how MEN help create the wage gap. If the roles were reversed so that men raised the children and women raised the income, men would average lower pay than women.
See “A Response to the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” at http://tinyurl.com/pvbrcu
By the way, the next Equal Occupational Fatality Day is in 2020. The year 2020 is how far into the future women will have to work to experience the same number of work-related deaths that men experienced in 2009 alone.