This is a story of salary discrimination and a law suit that dragged on for ten years, just as Lilly Ledbetter’s did but, unlike Mrs. Ledbetter, all of the women involved in this class action suit received a salary adjustment and back wages. In 1973 during my tenure at a state college in Massachusetts, a wage discrepancy between faculty women’s and men’s salaries was discovered by the U.S. Labor Department while investigating a similar problem with the janitorial staff.  The case was subsequently taken over by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC).

EEOC continued its investigations by interviewing faculty.  Here I must admit that at first I simply could not believe that I was paid less than my male counterparts – until I was shown some salary comparisons!  Then women began to talk to each other, and it soon became apparent that the longer a woman had been on the faculty, the more her salary lagged behind those of her male colleagues. EEOC filed a suit on behalf of the 122 faculty women, who by this time were ready to be active on their own behalf.  We made presentations and appeals to the president of the college and the board of trustees.  We wrote to the Governor, met and corresponded with the Governor’s Advisor on Women’s Issues, and arranged press coverage whenever possible.  We had a clever and persistent woman as the attorney representing us, and the presiding judge was also a woman. 

The decision that the college was in “willful violation” of the Equal Pay Act was handed down in 1983.  But that was not the end of it.  The college created delays and appealed the ruling.  Two more years passed before the decision was upheld by the First Circuit Appeals Court, and faculty women won ten years of back pay.  More importantly, women emerged as faculty leaders and were elected to the presidency of the faculty governance body.

Meanwhile, an informal group had been formed to support faculty who were revising their courses to include more about women’s contributions and perspectives into the courses we were teaching.  The new insights were incorporated not only into our courses, but also into job descriptions so that search committees could include women and people of color as candidates for administrative and leadership roles.

The struggle for fairness, as Lilly Ledbetter so clearly has shown, involves personal risk, sacrifice and courage, but the process often brings unanticipated benefits that change the culture of the institutions within which we work.  We honor Lilly Ledbetter for what she has accomplished and for her leadership in the continuing battle for fairness in the workplace.