Lilly Ledbetter, icon of equal pay in US, dies aged 86 | EUROtoday

Lilly Ledbetter, whose title graces an equal pay regulation within the US, has died aged 86.

CBS, the BBC’s information associate within the US, quoted her youngsters as saying she died peacefully on Saturday surrounded by household and family members.

“Our mother lived an extraordinary life,” added a household assertion.

Ms Ledbetter’s activism led to the primary invoice signed into regulation by Barack Obama after he turned US president in 2009.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act made it simpler for staff to sue after discovering they have been being discriminated by pay.

Mr Obama stated that the regulation despatched the message “that there are no second-class citizens in our workplaces”.

President Biden, who was vice-president in the course of the Obama administration, described Ms Ledbetter as a “fearless leader and advocate for equal pay”.

He paid tribute, saying “her fight began on the factory floor and reached the Supreme Court and Congress” and he or she “never stopped fighting for all Americans to be paid what they deserve”.

“Before she was a household name, Lilly was like so many other women in the workforce: she worked hard, with dignity, only to find out she was being paid less than a man for the same work.”

Biden added it was “an honour to stand with Lilly as the bill that bears her name was made law”, describing the Fair Pay Restoration Act as a “critical step forward in the fight to close the gender and racial wage gaps”.

Ms Ledbetter labored as a supervisor for Goodyear, the tyre producer, in Alabama for almost 20 years earlier than discovering she was being paid lower than males doing the identical job.

The Supreme Court dominated in 2007 that she had no grounds to sue as a result of her grievance had not been lodged inside six months of the discrimination first happening. Her regulation overturned that ruling.

The former president paid tribute on Twitter/X, saying Ms Ledbetter “never set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work”.

“Lilly did what so many Americans before her have done: setting her sights high for herself and even higher for her children and grandchildren,” Mr Obama stated.

Ms Ledbetter continued her advocacy after the regulation was signed.

She obtained the Future Is Female Lifetime Achievement Award from Advertising Week final week, in accordance with the Alabama information website AL.com.

A brand new movie about her life, known as Lilly and starring Patricia Clarkson, has just lately been proven on the Hamptons International Film Festival.