Women getting even
IN 1981, when Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda starred in the zany feminist revenge movie "9 to 5," working women in America earned about 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Now the ratio is 77 cents. It's small progress, but even that came too late for Lilly Ledbetter, who toiled for a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama for 20 years before she realized she was being paid $18,100 less than a male counterpart doing the same job.
Ledbetter's case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled against her in May because she had failed to file her discrimination claim under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act within the 180 days required. The time limitation section is murky, and the 5-4 ruling came down to how the justices interpreted it: Is a victim required to file within 180 days of the first discriminatory act, or only within 180 days of discovering a discriminatory pattern? The majority, including, unsurprisingly, all five conservative members of the court, ruled the former.
In a curt dissent written, also unsurprisingly, by the only woman on the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the majority "does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination." Few bosses, or even colleagues, will voluntarily tell someone that they are being cheated because of their race or sex. And pay discrimination often accrues slowly, as in Ledbetter's case, with smaller raises and bonuses compounding over time. It can take years before a woman trying to make it in a male-dominated workplace (Ledbetter was the lone woman among 15 men) decides she has taken enough guff to make a federal case out of it.
Ginsburg explicitly urged Congress to clarify its intent on the 180-day rule and "correct this parsimonious reading of Title VII." Happily, the US House did just that last week, passing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by 225 to 199. The bill clarifies that every paycheck or other compensation, such as a bonus, that flows from an earlier discriminatory pay decision constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act. As long as workers file their charges within 180 days of any discriminatory paycheck, their claim would be considered timely. The Senate has a similar bill that should also be passed quickly, despite a threatened veto from President Bush.
The hairsplitting by the court majority violates the intent of Title VII, which is to provide "robust" protection against job discrimination. Congress is moving to clear that up. Once it does, any veto by Bush would reveal his deeper hostility to government's role in protecting workplace equality.
Bush and his ideological brethren on the court may look with rosy nostalgia upon the days before women could sue for equal pay, but many women remember those times quite differently. 