Lilly and Judy ✴️ Historic Calls to Action

Issue 2841 — March 10, 2025

What an amazing International Women’s Day 2025 I was privileged to experience! It was equal measure inspiring celebrations of women’s progress and passionate calls to action to change the state of the world for women, where rights won are being lost and many protections of equal treatment are being erased a warp speed.

The two events I attended both received well deserved standing ovations.

That’s because of the way each exemplified progress is possible through struggle and movement building. And each illustrated a poignant reminder that no step forward is forever unless there is constant activism.

This requires not just resisting the inevitable roadblocks and rollbacks, but also keeping a movement moving forward with an aggressive and visionary agenda.

Complacency is the enemy of sustained or even maintained progress.

How did you participate in International Women’s Day? Please share your experiences. Here are mine.

✴️ I attended the 15th anniversary of the Athena Film Festival at New York’s Barnard College on the cold and windy afternoon of March 8, which was International Women’s Day. I particularly went to see a screening of “Lilly,” the story of Lilly Ledbetter and her courageous fight for equal pay.

L-R: “Lilly” writer/director Rachel Feldman, Take The Lead president Gloria Feldt, Patricia Clarkson who plays “Lilly,” Rachel Feldman, film critic Thelma Adams, Gloria Feldt, Take The Lead board member Susan Arnot Heaney

I know this story well, having had the opportunity to meet Lilly on several occasions and interview her on a LinkedIn Live, which you can watch here. And as an advocate for women’s equal power, pay, and leadership positions, of course I followed the legendary lawsuit after she discovered she had been paid far less for decades by her employer, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, than her male coworkers with the same position and less experience than she had.

I had taken a special interest in the making of the film since learning about it during Take The Lead’s 50 Women Can Change the World in Media and Entertainment. Rachel Feldman, the film’s director and writer, and one of the producers, Jyoti Sarda, met while they were both participants in the program.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first Bill President Barak Obama signed into law when he took office. Surrounded by women leaders and legislators mostly in red power blazers, Obama had made equal pay a central theme of his candidacy after the United States Supreme Court declined to uphold a lower court ruling favorable to Ledbetter’s claim of pay discrimination and denied her substantial monetary award that a jury had determined she deserved to receive.

Watch for “Lilly” coming to a theater near you Mother’s Day weekend. Go support this important story and tell your friends.

Bring tissue. Award winning actress Patricia Clarkson plays Lilly to a T.

(If you’re in the Phoenix area, we’ll be doing a pre-release screening in April, so be sure to follow me and subscribe to Take The Lead’s newsletter so you’ll be first to know the exact details. You won’t want to miss this opportunity!)

Kudos to writer/director Rachel Feldman whose commitment to bringing “Lilly” to life took over a decade to reach fruition. Turns out the timing couldn’t be more perfect, as women’s rights and all efforts for greater equality and inclusion are shockingly threatened today.

✴️ That evening, I attended the legendary singer/songwriter Judy Collins 85th birthday concert, a once in a lifetime gathering of musical greats to celebrate what was billed as “85 years of #music and #protest.”

Collins’ distinctive voice, still as clear as fine crystal, evokes the sound of an era to people like me who were there during the civil rights and anti-war movements. The audience was packed with such people it seemed, and all immediately joined in when she invited us to sing along “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

That song serves as a poignant reminder of the cyclical nature of human progress and regression.

Its central question “When will they ever learn?” is the very one we need to ask ourselves today.

GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.