The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – A real victory for feminists and families everywhere

My family often remarks on my being a feminist as if I had some kind of slightly embarrassing disease. "You know Beth, she's a [pause] feminist." Frankly, I find this flattering and a bit funny. On the one hand, it's rather enjoyable for a middle-aged woman to be regarded as somewhat dangerous when I usually feel as if I should be labeled “mostly harmless,” like the Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. On the other hand, feminism has fractured into so many factions --- radical, third world, postmodern, third-wave--- that the term is danger of meaning just about anything you want it to. That is, except for the negative connotation that equates “feminist” with “humorless man hater” – that association continues on as strong as ever, but I've never actually met a “feminist” of that description, and I've been happily married for over twenty years so I can safely assume my husband doesn't think of me that way either.

When I do think of myself as a “feminist,” it is usually in terms that are pragmatic rather than ideological. Feminism, for me, encompasses political and social responses to inequities between men and women, and the most serious of these are inequalities before the law and inequality in pay. That is why I am so thrilled that President Obama has signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law because it address both of these inequalities in the case of a true miscarriage of justice. “Equal pay is by no means just a women's issue, it's a family issue," the President said. "And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month's paycheck to simple and plain discrimination,” ("Obama signs first bill into law, on equal pay," AP).

Lily Ledbetter is not an ideologue, and it is questionable whether she ever thought of herself as a “feminist,” but she was dismayed to find that after working at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Alabama for almost twenty years, there had been a sizable discrepancy in pay between her and her male co-workers. Ledbetter pursued a discrimination case all the way to the Supreme Court where her case was rejected based on a catch-22 argument that she should have filed suit within 180 days of the first occurrence of discrimination even though she did not discover the injury until she reached retirement.

Lily Ledbetter will not receive one dime of the more than $200,000 in salary, pension and social security benefits she lost through the discrimination she experienced, but she was willing to fight for this legislation to ensure that our “nation's daughters and granddaughters will have a better deal.” To me the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act embodies the core of what feminism should be about, particularly in an age where Census Bureau figures show that women still earn about 78 cents for every dollar men get for doing equivalent jobs.

While much feminist rhetoric has become embroiled in stale debates over “politically-correct” terminology, this new law marks a real advance for women who face so many serious obstacles towards true economic equality. For example, women disproportionately bear the costs of child care and are more likely to need subsidized care in order to be able to earn a living wage; in many states women face discrimination in health care costs without any legal protection to prevent this from happening, and of course, women's longer life spans make it even more important that they save for retirement.

Women already face social and cultural barriers that make it difficult for them to ask for raises, and they also run the risk of being perceived in more negative terms when they are assertive about asking for more pay. There are many subtle forms of bias that women negotiate every day, including the social assumption that men “need” jobs more than women, or that women are more likely to give up their jobs to raise children, and therefore don't “deserve” the same career investment that male employees get.

What Lily Ledbetter has fought for, the rights of women to take instances of pay discrimination to court without facing unrealistic constraints on their ability to find out about and prepare evidence to support their cases, makes it much more likely that employers will think twice before paying men and women different compensation for the same work. For taking that important step towards a level playing field, Lily Ledbetter and the many women and men who worked to bring this legislation to Congress and fought until it reached the President's desk deserve our thanks for a truly “feminist” victory.