Do you know the name Lilly Ledbetter? Do you know why she was sitting as a guest in Michelle Obama’s box during President Obama’s Congressional Address last week?

Lilly Ledbetter may not have fit the typical profile of an Executive Mom, but she will and should go down in history as being one of the more influential ones. Ms. Ledbetter is an Alabama woman who worked as a supervisor in a tire factory for 19 years — and realized throughout that she had been paid less than her male colleagues. She brought suit against her employer (Goodyear), and the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2007. Where she lost. However, she was decided against on more of a technicality involving when she filed suit; the impact of her case was enough that it prompted creation of a bill which President Obama just recently signed into law, that expands a worker’s right to sue for wage inequalities. It is the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

So, we all need to send a sisterly salute to Lilly. However, it does not change the inherent, and continuing, state of inequality that made her initial actions necessary. Take a look at this interesting graph from the March 1, 2009 New York Times, mapping out by profession the wage disparities between men and women.

http://www.nytimes.com

To what should be our great, shared dismay, the gap varies from industry to industry– but the gap itself seems almost universal. Progressed as we are (one by-product of the current economy is that women are now going to outnumber men in the workforce)… we still have a lot of ground to overcome.