Lilly Ledbetter Case Analysis

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The extensive studies conducted over the past 50 years on gender based wage gap show that even though the gap has narrowed over the years, it still irrefutably exists. The laws such as The Equal Pay Act of 1963, whose main purpose is to prohibit gender based wage discrimination, helped reduce the wage gap but it did not eliminate it. The case of Lilly Ledbetter is a prime example that shows that gender based discrimination still exists even though there is a law that is enacted to eliminate it. In 2005, Lilly Ledbetter discovered that for several years, the wages she received were lower than that of the lowest paid male employee in her company. Therefore, she took legal action against her company for gender based wage discrimination, and her case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. …show more content…
Consequently, President Obama in 2009 signed this very first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Play Act to narrow the pay gap between men and women. However, women still earn lower wages than men according to many recent studies. The January, 2016 White House Brief states that, “the median wage of a woman working full-time all year in the United States is about $39,600—only 79 percent of a man’s median earnings of $50,400” (FACT SHEET: New steps to advance equal pay on the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act, 2016). In addition, recent research data also suggest that the median wages of women are lower than that of men irrespective of whether the income is measured based hourly, weekly or annual earnings (Costello and Hegewisch,