By Lilly Ledbetter and  Lanier Scott Isom

View full sizeLilly Ledbetter had her case for equal pay heard by the U.S. Supreme Court (Special/Robert X. Fogarty for Chicago Ideas Week).

Clearly, fate had other plans for this Alabama girl. After all, I started out as a supervisor at a tire plant. Thirty years later, I've been a litigant, an advocate, a lobbyist, an author and a public speaker.

In 2009, when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, he restored the law to its original intent, allowing women like me, who have experienced discrimination in the workplace, to stand up for ourselves.

As I said at the Democratic National Convention, the Ledbetter bill was the first step, but it can't be the last. Women still earn just 77 cents for every dollar men make. Those pennies add up to real money. It's real money for the little things like being able to take your kids to the movies and for the big things like sending them to college; it's paying your rent this month and paying the mortgage in the future; it's having savings for the bill you didn't expect and for the dignified retirement you've earned.

During the recent presidential debates, Mitt Romney was asked a simple question: Would he have signed a bill that allowed women to earn equal pay for equal work? He refused to answer. Instead, he suggested that women make less money than men because they need more flexible work schedules.

In reference to rectifying inequalities in the workplace, Romney was quick to answer. "Binders full of women," he insisted loud and clear. Yes, "binders full of women" is his outreach strategy for hiring capable women, his plan for equality for the millions of women, many the sole breadwinners in their families, facing, as I did, the same unfair situation all across America.

Every day women across America are underpaid simply because they are women. According to Evelyn Waugh, president of the Wage Project, this wage gap translates into a significant loss for women and their families, a loss of approximately $11,000  in annual income compared to men. A high school graduate will lose $700,000 over a working lifetime (47 years of full time work); a college graduate faces a loss of $1.2 million; and for a professional school graduate, the wage gap escalates to $2 million.

Just this week the American Association of University Women released a new study, "Graduating to a Pay Gap," which shows how the persistent pay gap affects women just one year out of college. Clearly, the "motherhood penalty" Romney alluded to doesn't explain why women start their careers earning less than men. This timely report paints a disturbing picture for college-educated women who are losing out financially, from their first paycheck to their last Social Security check.

For me, I lost over $200,000 in salary. My pension, Social Security and the countless overtime hours I worked were also based on the same discriminatory pay. Over the course of my career, I was cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have contributed to my children's education, my family's medical bills or my community's businesses.

From Wall Street to Main Street, it doesn't matter what the industry, women are underpaid. If pay discrimination were a disease, it would be like hypertension, a silent killer. Everyone, both Republicans and Democrats, should be working to remedy the wage gap. Pay equity is a fundamental American right President Obama has been fighting for right alongside me and women across the country since his very first days in office as president. He will continue fighting for women for the next four years.

In the end, I was shortchanged. But this fight became bigger than Lilly Ledbetter. Today, it's about my daughter. It's about my granddaughter. It's about women and men. It's about families. It's about equality and justice for the next generation.

Lilly Ledbetter and Lanier Scott Isom are co-authors of Grace and Grit: How I Won My Fight for Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, Lilly Ledbetter's memoir, published this spring by Random House. Ledbetter will appear on the The Colbert Report on Oct. 31.