By Lanier Isom, co-author of Lilly Ledbetter’s memoir “Grace and Grit: How I Won My Fair at Goodyear and Beyond"
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the historic Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2009. Lilly and I both live in Alabama, a state ranked 48th in the nation for pay equity, a state where the gender gap is projected to close in the year 2089. In America, women working full time can expect to be paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to a man, creating an average annual gap of $10,169, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Women of color fare the worst.
In recent weeks, with the government shutdown, there’s been much discussion about Americans living paycheck to paycheck. If equal pay were a reality, millions of women and their families would be better suited to deal with inevitable difficulties, the anomaly of the current shutdown notwithstanding. At the current rate, if the wage gap continues to close, it will take decades from now, in 2059, to reach workplace equality. Census data also indicates, as a group, the wage gap costs women employed full time more than $900 billion a year, income they could spend on securing economic stability for themselves and their families.
As Lilly always says, equal pay isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a family issue. Wage disparities have far reaching consequences affecting educational, health, and professional opportunities and choices for families for generations. Whether a woman is a waitress or a neurosurgeon, when women are paid unfairly, the people they care for --- their partners, sons, daughters and parents --- are impacted as well. Without fair pay, families go hungry, lack proper transportation, adequate housing, decent educational choices, and sufficient savings and retirement. For working women, the gap represents some or all of a contribution to a savings account they otherwise would make.
Women make-up half the labor force. Millions of families depend on women’s paychecks to make ends meet; millions more rely on women as the primary breadwinner. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research study of earnings released in November 2018, women today earn just 49 cents to the typical man’s dollar when accounting for overall labor force participation across 15 years, a significant decrease from the 80 cents usually reported.
In our country today, 3 of 4 families headed by single mothers do not earn enough to pay the household bills or save for the future. A family’s economic security depends on a woman’s paycheck, as does the nation’s economic well-being. Paying women fairly would add billions to the GDP, while low wages mean families have less money to spend on goods and services stifling economic growth. Fair pay for women dramatically impacts poverty rates for families and single mothers.
In 1979, Lilly entered the almost all male world of the Goodyear Tire and Manufacturing Company in Gadsden, Alabama. She dared to step out of place, to value her own worth, and to try and make more money for her family. Through the years, she was sexually harassed and physically threatened, but the deadliest blow, the most dramatic retaliation was she was being paid 35%-40% less than the male managers, a buried secret she only discovered at the end of her almost twenty-year career. Not much has changed in the past two decades since Lilly retired. In fact, Trump has rolled back progress when, in 2017, he blocked the rule requiring companies to report employees’ pay based on race and gender. Transparency is too burdensome on business according to the Trump administration. As long as the facts are hidden, pay inequities don’t exist, and fair pay advocates silenced when government and companies refuse to acknowledge the reality of working women’s daily life.
The Equal Pay Act, (equal pay for equal work) a result of political forces galvanized by women entering the workforce during WWII, was designed to prevent the entrenched discrimination against women at work. Since 1963, hard won progress has been slow. The Paycheck Fairness Act, yet to be passed by Congress, would strengthen The Equal Pay Act with additional protections for workers, such as protecting them from retaliation for discussing salaries.
In our current workforce, men still dominate managerial and leadership positions, and more women than men shoulder the unpaid responsibilities, such as housework and caring for children and parents. Because part of being silenced means being invisible, the uncalculated value of women’s domestic work, their second shift, isn’t even measured in GDP data. It’s also important to note, more women make up part-time jobs in this country and staff the lowest paying sectors of the economy.
While states like Oregon have enacted an Equal Pay Act and other states prohibit employers from asking about an employee’s prior salary, the Supreme Court currently is considering a case that could gut the Equal Pay Act.
Today our greatest hope is the influx of new women members of Congress who can be trailblazers like Lilly, and fight to speed up the glacial pace of pay equity. Lilly fought ten years for the equal pay she had earned only for the Supreme Court to side with those who shortchanged her by ruling against her in a 5-4 decision, prompting her to fight for the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. To this day, Lilly seeks justice for the next generation, telling young audiences equal pay isn’t a partisan issue or a women’s issue. As a family issue, Lilly believes, “Equal pay for equal work is an American value.”