Lilly Ledbetter still remembers the shock she felt on the day in 1998 when she learned that her male counterparts at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. were earning as much as 40 percent more than she was.
After all, Ledbetter had a distinct memory of watching President John F. Kennedy in 1963 sign the Equal Pay Law, which prohibited gender-based wage discrimination. She remembers him saying, “This is to make sure that women and minorities have their rightful pay when they come home. They need their equal pay to support their families.” Two years earlier, Kennedy had signed an executive order banning such discrimination in the federal government, including among its contractors such as Goodyear, based in Akron, Ohio.
