One piece prohibits employers from telling employees they can’t discuss pay at work. Across the country, about half of workers say they are banned or discouraged from talking about pay, even though they have a legal right to do so at work. That can make it very difficult for women to find out whether they are being paid less than men for the same work; Lilly Ledbetter, for whom the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was named, didn’t know she had been discriminated against until someone wrote her an anonymous note 19 years later. And in workplaces where wages are more transparent, the gender wage gap is much smaller .