Lilly Ledbetter to speak at DNC on Women's Equality Day (Tuesday)

Tomorrow, August 26, is Women's Equality Day.

And it is extremely appropriate that tomorrow evening, at approximately 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, Lilly Ledbetter will speak at the Democratic National Convention about her fight for fair pay for women and the importance of passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

For those of you who may not know Lilly's name, she had worked at Goodyear for 19 years when she discovered she was being paid significantly less than every one of her male counterparts. So she sued. A jury agreed that she had been paid unfairly, and awarded her $223,776 in back pay, and over $3 million in punitive damages.

But then a judge cut that to only $300,000 because of a 1991 law that says that you must take action within 180 days of when the pay discrimination started, or else you're out of luck. If you don't find out about it until it's been going on for several years, as was the case with Lilly Ledbetter, too bad.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831) would change that. It would give an employee 180 days to sue after each discriminatory paycheck is issued, not just the very first one. The bill passed in the House last year, but is now in limbo in the Senate.

Hopefully Lilly's convention address will inspire some movement on this issue.