Congressman Ross talks about fair pay for women

Ross Says Three Years since Passage, Legislation Already Making Difference for Women

Three years ago this week, Congress passed and the President signed into law a historic piece of legislation that advances the fight for women against wage discrimination. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was one of the first pieces of legislation passed in the 111th Congress and it was done so alongside the Paycheck Fairness Act, both of which work to close the unfair pay gap between men and women.

The name of the bill comes from a woman named Lilly Ledbetter who worked for nearly two decades at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Facility in Alabama. At the time, she was the lowest-paid supervisor at the plant, despite having more experience than several of her male counterparts. It wasn’t until an anonymous note from a coworker alerted her to the pay discrimination that she decided to sue the company. While she won her lawsuit in the lower courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Lilly waited too long to sue for pay, tossing aside longstanding laws and making it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims.

More than 40 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act and Title VI, women are still being paid less for performing the same job as their male colleagues. In fact, the Institute of Women’s Policy Research in 2009 estimated that women earned just 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man, costing women anywhere from $400,000 to $2 million in wages over a lifetime.

Equal pay is not simply a women’s issue, but a family issue. The wage gap hurts everyone – husbands, wives, children and parents – because it lowers the overall family income. When women earn more, an entire family benefits. Given these tough economic times, this pay gap can often make a bad situation worse, particularly for the 41 percent of women who are their families’ sole source of income.

That’s why I was proud to help pass both the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 and the Paycheck Fairness Act. These key initiatives will help close the gender pay gap by giving women a longer time frame to challenge a discriminatory pay check, strengthening the Equal Pay Act of 1963, requiring employers to justify that unequal pay is not discriminatory and prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers.

Since its enactment, the law is already helping women all over the country get fair pay for their work. The courts sided with a female police office in Pennsylvania, who was making thousands less than her male counterparts. The courts also ruled in favor of a female professor in Mississippi who was denied tenure and a salary increase because of her gender.

While these new laws are an important step forward, we still have a long way to go. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act were two important bills I was proud to support, because they are key to strengthening our middle class families and putting our economy back on track. As your Congressman, I will keep fighting for you and keep working with both Democrats and Republicans to make this nation better and stronger for our children and grandchildren.