Imagine working at a company for almost 20 years and earning numerous performance awards, only to get a smaller paycheck than a co-worker solely on the basis of gender.
Lilly Ledbetter found herself in just that situation when an anonymous tip alerted her she was making considerably less than even the lowest paid of her male co-workers.
Ledbetter will speak at the Telfair Peet Theatre on the subject of the gender gap in pay today at 3 p.m.
"It's just a really important issue right now because the Paycheck Fairness Act has been passed by the House of Representatives and is going up in front of the Senate next," said Barbara Baker, director of the Women's Leadership Institute in Auburn. "So the time is really ripe to have a representative come to Auburn to talk about this."
Ledbetter, the second guest speaker in the WLI's Extraordinary Women Lecture Series, spent eight years after her early retirement in 1998 fighting her employer, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, in court for gender pay discrimination.
In 2007, Ledbetter took her case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Goodyear's favor in a 5-4 decision.
The decision followed laws that stated all complaints must be filed within 180 days of the first offense.
Ledbetter then took her cause to Congress, which in 2009 passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, allowing workers to file complaints after each discriminatory offense, not merely the first.
At her lecture, Ledbetter will speak about her experiences and the continuing issue of pay inequality.
"I am encouraging SWE members to attend the event," said Jessica Johnsey, president of the Society of Women Engineers. "I always try and encourage my fellow male classmates to attend these events as well. I find that many young men are not aware of these situations, such as the one Ms. Ledbetter was in."
Ledbetter's lecture is especially relevant in the face of a Women's Policy Research study, which concluded that, in 2009, women on average made 77 cents for every dollar a man received, a slight improvement from 73.7 cents in 2000.
"But this doesn't mean that things are getting better for American workers," said Ruth Crocker, professor of history and director of the women's studies program. "Partly, it results from the loss of well-paying and unionized jobs to other countries that have cheaper labor. Most, but not all of those well-paid jobs in the U.S. were held by men."
Ledbetter's experience with the gender gap and her efforts to narrow it make her a natural choice for the lecture series, and as a native of Alabama, she can offer a more personal perspective to students.
"We want an Alabama heroine," Baker said. "We want somebody from our state who just made a decision to lead in the situation she was put in. This is not a person who set out to be a leader; it's a person who became very passionate about an issue that affected her and did something about it."
Baker said she hopes Ledbetter and other speakers the WLI invites to campus can inspire students to act if they see discrimination.
"We're looking for someone we think our students can relate to," Baker said. "We want them to meet a real person and not just listen to her talk, but have a cup of coffee with her and be able to say to themselves, 'I can do this, too.'"
Ledbetter's speech will last approximately 30 minutes. It will be followed by a question-and-answer session and meet-and-greet in the theatre with attendees afterward. It is open to the public.
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