The Lilly Ledbetter Act added nothing to the right of women to be paid on an equal basis with men. The Paycheck Fairness Act was a kind of companion bill to the Lilly Ledbetter Act, except with the Equal Pay Act as its target. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, reversing the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling, was the first bill he signed into law soon after his inauguration, and he duly trotted out Lilly Ledbetter to stand beside him at the signing. Obama promptly made Ledbetter one of the poster children of his extremely successful effort to secure the female vote. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that Ledbetter had waited too long to bring her complaint of sex discrimination, and that she should have filed with the EEOC at around the time she first became aware of Goodyear’s alleged gender-based pay disparity rather than at the time she collected her last paycheck. But she waited until shortly before her retirement from Goodyear in 1998 to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. who had believed for years that she been paid less than her male coworkers because of her sex. Ledbetter, you might remember, was a former employee of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. To switch metaphors ever so slightly, it was one of what I call the evil spawn of Lilly Ledbetter. It was a subtle reminder that the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which the Paycheck Fairness Act purported to amend, was passed with the enthusiastic support of Jackie’s soon-to-be-assassinated husband (and, I might add for the record, every single Republican in Congress at the time).Īs for the Paycheck Fairness Act itself, it was a turkey of a bill about which I hope someone will finally say, “Three’s a charm - time for the chopping block.” It had a pleasing retro look to it, with its two women silhouetted in elegant Jackie Kennedy period attire. Grim socialist realism is the only permissible artistic style in the feminist polity.Īctually, that graphic was the best thing about the Paycheck Fairness Act. Right, the Paycheck Fairness Act failed because the White House graphic featured a drawing of a couple of women wearing dresses (one pink - oh my!) and high heels instead of pants and sneakers. It screams “Sex and the City,” not “9 to 5.” This is just not great messaging or symbolism for a White House that wants to also focus on women in minimum wage jobs. This is exactly what working women wear to work every day, right? All those women who are lawyers, and doctors, and cashiers, and investment bankers, and biochemists, and nursing assistants and architects and engineers and cashiers at the Piggly Wiggly?. It pictures two women, one in a pink dress carrying a handbag, the other in an orange dress, and both are wearing oh-so-practical stilettos.
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