Wages, raises, and ambiguity - more on Lily Ledbetter

Per United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Initially, Ledbetter’s salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority.

Basically it seems she started out at similar wage rates. (This doesn't discuss whether she actually had similar productivity as her male counterparts - we know, for example, that women working full-time on average work fewer hours). Where this struck me as interesting was when I came across a article on gender differences in salary negotiations. From its abstract:

... we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse. In terms of sorting, we find that men in contrast to women prefer job environments where the ‘rules of wage determination’ are ambiguous.

It would seem to make sense that this would apply to both initial salary negotiations as well as later renegotiations (i.e. wage increases). Outside union jobs - in which wages and performance may be disconnected - it seems virtually impossible to have an environment where wages are unambiguous. (And if it was, that would seem to discriminate against men per the study).

One thing that I'm a little unclear about is whether Ledbetter actually tried to renegotiate her salary over the years. Wikipedia notes inconsistencies in her testimony before Congress and in her earlier lawsuit as to when she became aware of differences in pay:

Ledbetter's testimony before Congress has been criticized because she represented that she did not learn of the pay disparity until shortly before the complaint, but her earlier sworn deposition testimony indicated that she discovered the pay disparity as early as 1992, six years before filing the complaint in 1998. In a deposition held as a part of her lawsuit, Ledbetter testified that she "knew in 1992" she was "being paid less than [her] peers". When asked how she knew about the discrepancy, she stated that "[d]ifferent people that I worked for along the way had always told me that my pay was extremely low." She continued, "Kim Whitman had told me that." Ledbetter testified that Mr. Whitman, who was her manager in 1992, told her "it was low in comparison to [her] peers". However, in her testimony before the Senate, Ledbetter stated that she "only learned about the discrepancy in [her] pay after nineteen years [1998], and that was with someone leaving me an anonymous note"."

Either Ledbetter is guilty of perjury or she had quite a few years in which to try to correct any wage disparity (at least any disparity not due to her relative performance). It would seem that, judging by her later testimony to Congress, this was a step she didn't take.

At the moment she seems to acknowledge being essentially unemployable due to the risk of her suing her employers. This seems an entirely reasonable response on the part of employers due to the possibility of her filing a lawsuit rather than doing something like trying to renegotiate wages.