Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond
Mar 4, 2012
Grace and Grit
Authors:Lilly Ledbetter and Lanier Scott Isom
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Crown Archetype (February 28, 2012)
ISBN-10: 0307887928
Book Description
The courageous story of the woman at the center of the historic discrimination case that inspired the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act--her fight for equal rights in the workplace, and how her determination became a victory for the nation.
In 1979, Lilly applied for her dream job at the Goodyear tire factory. Even though the only women she’d seen there were secretaries in the front offices where she’d submitted her application, she got the job — one of the first women hired at the management level.
Though she faced daily discrimination and sexual harassment, Lilly pressed onward, believing that eventually things would change. Until, nineteen years later, Lilly received an anonymous note revealing that she was making thousands less per year than the men in her position. Devastated, she filed a sex discrimination case against Goodyear, which she won — and then heartbreakingly lost on appeal. Over the next eight years, her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where she lost again. In a dramatic moment, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, urging Lilly to fight back.
And fight Lilly did, becoming the namesake of President Barack Obama's first official piece of legislation. Today, she is a tireless advocate for change, traveling the country to urge women and minorities to claim their civil rights.
Idgie Says:
The description of the book pretty much tells the story of Lilly's fight for equal pay, but the book encompasses her entire life, from marriage to childbirth to the lovely joys of aging and ill health. She not only fights for her pay rights, but dealing with her husband as he tells her she will obey him and act as a wife should. Her son has speech development issues that must be dealt with and then her husband develops cancer. While she's living her life as she must...she's also fighting to be considered an equal to men.
This is a biographical story, very factual in it's telling, but Lanier manages to take the presented facts and create a full story behind the words.
At the end of the book is reference material regarding the case, including Lilly's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, plus Obama's speech upon signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.
Lilly will be on CBS This Morning and The Rachel Maddow Show Monday, March 5.
CSPN will be filming the Georgia event for Book TV, and both Lilly and Lanier will both be on the stage for a Q&A after Lilly’s presentation.
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