What you should know about Lilly Ledbetter, the equal pay activist who inspired Lilly
Seven months after the death of Lillie Ledbetter, for whom the Lillie Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed by Congress is named, a film about her life hits theaters on May 9.
In the biopic “Lillie,” Patricia Clarkson plays Ledbetter, a Goodyear employee who discovers she’s being paid less than her male supervisors. The film follows her legal journey to the U.S. Supreme Court. It culminates in the historic passage of the Lillie Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in Congress in 2009.
Here’s what you need to know about the real woman who inspired Lillie.
What Lillie Ledbetter Experienced
Ledbetter’s upbringing in poverty gave her the resilience to fight a long legal battle.
She was born in 1938 in Alabama, when employment options for women were limited.
“Ledbetter grew up without running water, without electricity, and with only a high school education,” says Lanier Scott Isom, who helped Ledbetter prepare her 2012 memoir, “Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond.” “Her clothes were made from feed sack materials.”
She was never afraid to get her hands dirty. For example, she worked in a chicken processing plant at one point to help her family make ends meet.
In 1979, as a married mother of two, she landed a job as a supervisor at a Goodyear factory in Gadsden, Alabama.
Her husband was always supportive of her work, but she encountered several men who felt threatened by her.
Ledbetter has always been vocal about the sexual harassment she experienced at work.
As Isom explains, “One of her supervisors said (paraphrasing), ‘If you want to come with me to the hotel next door, I’ll guarantee you a promotion.'”
“Lily” writer and director Rachel Feldman adds, “There was a guy who wouldn’t stop talking about her underwear and what kind of bra she was wearing, and another guy said (paraphrasing), ‘I don’t like women here. What if I have to scratch my balls and fart?'”
Work wasn’t the only place Ledbetter encountered abusive men. When her son suffered from recurring ear infections as a child and needed surgery, a doctor suggested she earn money by participating in a program that trained young surgeons to perform hysterectomies.
Nineteen years into her Goodyear career, she learned that a young man she had just trained was being paid more than her. An anonymous informant left her a note at work with the salaries of her male counterparts written on it, so she could see that she was earning up to $2,000 a month less than them.
Lily Ledbetter’s Fight for Equal Pay
A young lawyer named John Goldfarb, portrayed in the film by Thomas Sadoski, took on Ledbetter’s case, and “Lily” largely depicts her legal battle. Ledbetter won monetary compensation in federal court, but lost it after Goodyear appealed. In 2007, she lost her case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that claims must be filed within 180 days of any discriminatory action.
But Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke to Ledbetter with her own dissenting opinion, suggesting that she still had a chance to take her fight to Congress. “Lily” weaves together real interviews and speeches Ginsburg gave about Ledbetter.
As if fighting for equal pay legislation wasn’t difficult enough, Ledbetter had to do it while her husband battled cancer, even having his jaw removed in the process. But he was fully supportive of her efforts and did not object to her visits to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the bill’s passage.
President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on January 29, 2009, just nine days into his first term. It was the first major piece of legislation he signed as president. Ledbetter danced with Obama on Inauguration Day, a dream come true for her, having been a ballroom dancer since childhood.
Under the law, wage discrimination claims must be filed within 180 days of an employee’s last paycheck, rather than 180 days after the first discriminatory paycheck. As The New York Times reported, Ledbetter was not entitled to back pay from Goodyear because her discriminatory paychecks occurred before the law was enacted.
Lilly Ledbetter’s Legacy
Ledbetter died on October 12, 2024, at the age of 86. Lily is a perfect tribute to a movie buff like Ledbetter, who grew up watching films starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. “Lily really understood the power of movies—that when they touch people’s hearts, they touch their minds,” Feldman says.
Feldman consulted with Ledbetter throughout the scriptwriting process. “Often, I would call Lily and say, ‘I’ve written a great character here, but only Lily Ledbetter could come up with this line, so what would you say?’” When she was trying to come up with a line for the fictional Ledbetter to say when she arrived at a press conference and asked her how to calm her nerves before a dance competition, the real Ledbetter told Feldman that her character should say that she dreamed of winning the lottery.
Marc Benioff, owner of Time magazine and producer of the film, recalled his first encounter with Ledbetter on the anniversary of her death and wrote about how she inspired him to investigate and address pay disparities at his company, Salesforce. As of 2022, the company has spent $22 million to ensure equal pay, because, as she wrote, “It’s not just about fixing a problem once, it’s about ensuring equality is a core value of our company.”
Feldman told TIME that she hopes moviegoers will see “the importance of having male allies.”
While the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is a significant achievement, it hasn’t closed the gender pay gap. According to the Pew Research Center, women’s wages in 2024 were, on average, 85% of what men earned.
