Holly C. Corbett is a trained journalist and brand builder with multimedia expertise that spans from the written word to podcasts to video to curriculum creation. She has held leadership positions at established global media brands, social impact organizations, and content startups.
and says her story is also their story.first being signed in 2009, which helped to make equal pay laws more enforceable. However, the story actually begins three decades earlier.
Though she faced discrimination in this male-dominated workplace, many of the men who worked at the factory came to respect her, even going as far as to pool their money to buy her a gold bracelet when she was temporarily laid off when factory work was slow. “I was so shocked, because they put a note of appreciation with the bracelet, and they hated to see me go,” says Ledbetter.
. She won her case in court, but Goodyear appealed that decision on the account of her taking too long to file, and her case landed all the way in the Supreme Court in 2006. Ledbetter lost by one vote in a 5-4 decision, with the court saying Ledbetter should have sued within 180 days of first experiencing unequal wages as based on The Equal Pay Act of 1963—even though Ledbetter was not aware of her wage gap for almost two decades.
“The idea that an employer could profit on discriminating against someone forever if the person didn't discover their pay inequity within the first 180 days was outrageous,” says Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, who helped draft the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
“Culturally, there was an expectation for a very long time that people shouldn't talk about pay, but I think what we have been able to make clear is that pay discrimination really thrives in the shadows,” says Goss Graves. “And that the only people who lose out when you have laws and rules that keep pay a secret are working people, especially women and women of color.”