Age Interest Magazine Honours Ledbetter

The US based non-profit organisation AARP caters to the interests of people aged 50 plus, and one of the services it directs at its mature support base is AARP The Magazine. This publication, which AARP describes as the “definitive voice for 50+ Americans”, is claimed by the organisation to be, with 35.7 million readers, the world’s largest-circulation magazine. For the last eight years it has held an annual ‘Inspire Awards’, which salutes ten individuals in the aforementioned age bracket who “are using their energy, creativity, and passion to make the world a better place.” The 2010 list of honourees includes one name that may have a familiar ring to those at one Akron, US based tyre manufacturer – Lilly Ledbetter.

Ms Ledbetter’s battle against Goodyear Tire & Rubber has been well publicised both in the US and internationally. Following the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the tyre maker’s favour in the case Ledbetter initiated after discovering male employees were earning significantly more for doing her job, the retired Goodyear employee persisted in her legal action. The result was the “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act”, which some 17 months later became the first bill signed into law by President Obama. 

In honouring Ledbetter as an ‘equal pay advocate’, AARP said: Lilly Ledbetter learned what “a day’s work for fair pay” really meant while picking cotton on her grandfather’s farm. After 19 years working as a night-shift supervisor for Goodyear Tire & Rubber in Alabama, earning performance awards and accolades, Ledbetter learned she was making considerably less money than male supervisors. To even the playing field, Ledbetter embarked on an eight-year fight for equal compensation. The battle eventually led to the Supreme Court, followed by Congress, which passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Ledbetter knows her fight was worthwhile. “The young people getting out of school think discrimination is a thing of the past,” she says. “But when they hear my story, they know. We’ve got a long way to go.”
 
A profile of Ledbetter and the other honourees features in the January/February 2010 issue of AARP The Magazine, which, surprisingly, is already available.