A victory for all women
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: January 29, 2009
The federal stimulus package is getting all the media attention when it comes to how Americans can stabilize their incomes, but President Obama just did something this morning that will have an even greater impact for a longer time than the next ballyhooed government giveaway.
He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act into law.
I’ll have more to say about this in my column this weekend. But the Ledbetter Act, in case you weren’t with us when we covered this back in September, sets right a grievous injustice perpetrated by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The basics are these: Alabama’s own Lilly Ledbetter was a factory worker for almost 20 years. Set to retire, she discovered by accident that she had been paid less than men in her position. She sued. The Supreme Court told her, in effect, that since she didn’t sue when she was first discriminated against (back in the late ‘70s), she wasn’t entitled to sue. Never mind that she didn’t know about the problem until years later.
Well, the Congress and the new president have set all this right. With Ledbetter at his side, Obama signed the law that bears her name. The law makes the technical clarification that the statute of limitations restarts every time a discriminatory act occurs; in other words, each time a woman receives a paycheck that’s inferior to a man’s for the same work, the statute clock starts over.
Enough with the legalese. The bill ensures that women, who still make 78 cents on the dollar to men (and minority women earn even less), can expect to be treated—and paid—fairly, and they will have the courts in their corner when they are not.
It means that my sister, my three daughters and I don’t have to settle for less pay for doing the same work as men. It means that fair pay is no longer an intangible goal.
It means justice.
Thank you, President Obama.
See also:
“Equal is equal ... except when it’s not,“ my column on the Ledbetter Act
Previous blog entries that record how all three of my federal legislators opposed the bill and expose the lunacy of Republicans’ the-equal-pay-law-will-cause-more-lawsuits argument.
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