Lilly Ledbetter
Gender equality activist
Lilly Ledbetter began her professional life at Goodyear. Nineteen years after her first day at Goodyear, Lilly received an anonymous note revealing that she was making thousands less per year than the men in her position. She filed a sex discrimination case against Goodyear, which she won—and then lost on appeal. Over the next eight years, her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where she lost again. The court ruled that she should have filed suit within 180 days of her first unequal paycheck, despite the fact that she had no way of knowing that she was being paid unfairly all those years. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg strongly disagreed with the decision and read her dissent from the bench. Ledbetter was not discouraged.
She became the namesake of Barack Obama's first official piece of legislation as president, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Today, she is a tireless advocate for change, traveling the country to urge women and minorities to claim their civil rights.
Ledbetter was honored with the American Spirit Award for Citizen Activism at The Common Good Forum & The American Spirit Awards 2014.
Twitter: @Lilly_Ledbetter
