Tory Burch Asks Forbes Summit Why The Debate Around Equal Pay For Women Continues

Tory Burch CEO at Forbes Women’s Summit 2019.

Forbes considers Tory Burch to be one of America’s richest self-made women, estimating her net worth at $850 million. Judged today by her competence, strategic thinking and brand positioning, Tory Burch, who previously worked at Ralph Lauren and Vera Wang, says that when she launched her lifestyle brand in 2004, she wan’t taken very seriously.

Fashion is a notoriously cut throat, competitive business, but Burch says the business world piled on a whole other layer of value judgments, considering Tory Burch to be her vanity project. Burch told the audience at the Forbes Women’s Summit. “I was introduced as a female CEO. I was like, ‘When is a man introduced as a male CEO?’”

Burch joined ultimate equal-pay activist Lilly Ledbetter to discuss the impact of the gender pay gap in a Forbes Women’s Summit discussion moderated by Cosmopolitan editor Jessica Pels. Ledbetter is known as the Alabama area manager at a Goodyear plant who learned through an anonymous note that she was paid 35%-40% less than men in her same position.

Ledbetter’s case wound its way through the US court system, until the Supreme Court in 2007 overturned a $3 million verdict in her favor, ruling that pay discrimination lawsuits must filed within 180 days of her first unequal paycheck. President Obama effectively nullified the court’s decision in 2009, making the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first new law of his administration. Obama stipulated that the statute of limitations for filing equal-pay lawsuits based on pay discrimination resets with each new paycheck that is part of the discriminatory act.

Burch told the audience that she is incredulous that the gender pay gap persists in 2019. “It’s an issue of humanity,” she said. “Women are 50% of the population. I don’t understand why this debate is still going on.” The CEO also appealed to the interests of men, saying “Pay equity affects men, too, because no man wants his sister or daughter to be treated differently in the workplace.”

To aid in that effort Burch launched a charitable foundation dedicated to women entrepreneurs in 2009. In 2017 Burch’s foundation launched a campaign called “Embrace Ambition” that included a social media campaigns under the hashtag “#EmbraceAmbition,” a fellowship program targeting women entrepreneurs and a speaker series across major U.S. cities.

Forbes writes that this past March, Bank of America committed $100 million to give access to affordable loans to women entrepreneurs. The pledge was converted to action, with Bank America lending more than $50 million in loans have been issued to 2,500-plus women entrepreneurs.

Equal pay activist Lilly Ledbetter at Forbes Women Summit 2019