The Famous Lilly Ledbetter visits the South Loop

and you can go see her next Wednesday

09/08/2011 11:47 AM

By Bonnie McGrath

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The Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network is honoring labor activist Lilly Ledbetter at a luncheon next Wednesday at the Blackstone Hotel on South Michigan Avenue.

Ledbetter is the 73-year-old neo-American symbol of "equal pay for equal work." She was a supervisor for 20 years at the B.F. Goodrich Tire & Rubber Company’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, where she ultimately learned--unfortunately upon her retirement when it was way too late--that she was earning significantly less that her male counterparts.

She filed suit in 1998--and through the courts her case went. Ultimately, she lost on a technicality in the US Supreme Court in 2006. The Supremes never got to the merits of her case--the unfairness, the injustice, the gender discrimination.

Ledbetter continued fighting, though. And in 2009, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, thereby strengthening the meaning of Equal Pay for Equal Work. Technicalities be damned. It was the first bill signed into law by President Obama--and it will go down in history!

Ticket prices are $70 for the luncheon; $90 if you want to attend a VIP reception beforehand. Registration information is available at www.batteredwomensnetwork.org or at (312) 527-0730.


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By MaleMatters from Michigan
Posted: 09/08/2011 2:20 PM

If millions of wives are able to accept no wages, millions of other wives are able to accept low wages, refuse overtime and promotions, work part-time instead of full-time, take more unpaid days off, avoid uncomfortable wage-bargaining — all of which lower women's average pay. Women are able to make these choices because they are supported or anticipate being supported by a husband who must earn more than if he'd chosen never to marry. “Ledbetter Act” http://tinyurl.com/pvbrcu