A story that began as anonymous note scribbled on a paper scrap and slipped into an office mailbox made it to the world stage on Thursday, October 10, 2024, when “LILLY” — a film about the woman whose fight for equal pay led to groundbreaking anti-discrimination legislation — debuted at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter took a job at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsen, Alabama, as a plant manager. In that role, she had three male co-workers who did the same job. Initially, she received the same pay as these men. But then her wages began to lag, and they stayed lower than her male counterparts’ for years. Lilly was unaware of the inequality because Goodyear had a rule that made sharing information about one’s salary a terminable offense.
When she started working at Goodyear, Lilly and her husband had a daughter in college and a son planning to attend college, too. “We needed that money to pay tuition and the mortgage and other necessities of life,” Lilly said. When she read the whistleblower’s note, she said she felt physically sick, calculating how much she’d lost over two decades of work — not just in salary but in benefits, retirement savings, Social Security, and more. “I thought about how much my family had done without and how hard it had been when it was totally unnecessary,” she said.
Lilly began what became a decade-long legal fight. In 1998, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and in 1999 she sued Goodyear for gender discrimination. A federal court in Alabama agreed with her case and a jury awarded Lilly more than $3 million. Goodyear appealed the decision, and the lawsuit eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2007, the court ruled 5 to 4 in Goodyear’s favor because they said Lilly had filed her suit too late — more than 180 days after the initial decision to pay her less. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg — herself no stranger to gender-based job discrimination — wrote a dissent asking Congress to take up the issue. In 2009, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which eased the time restrictions in wage discrimination lawsuits. It was the first bill that President Barack Obama signed after taking office.
Despite this act and other legislation made into law more than fifty years ago by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, women still earn about 83 cents for every dollar paid to a man, according to a 2024 report from the Census Bureau. That figure is down from 84 cents in 2022, showing the wage gap is widening again after 20 years of shrinking. Typically, the pay gap is even greater for women of color.
Academy Award-nominated actress Patricia Clarkson, who played Lilly in the movie, said “It was the privilege of my lifetime” to tell her story. Lilly was “a beautiful, true, American hero,” she added. “We have to tell these stories of great women.”
The movie “Lilly” was directed by Rachel Feldman and scripted by Feldman and Adam Prince, and will be released in Spring 2025. Lincoln Road Enterprises was a co-executive producer on the film, thanks to funding Ann M. Drake provided to help bring Lilly’s story to the screen.
Lilly was able to see the movie about her life before its official release. She died of respiratory failure on Saturday, October 12, 2024, two days after the world premiere of LILLY at the Hamptons International Film Festival. She was 86 years old.
For more information: https://www.lillymovie.com/