Women continue to earn less than men, for a variety of reasons. Discrimination is one, research shows. Women are also likelier than men to work in lower-paying jobs like those in public service, caregiving and the nonprofit sector — and to take time off for children. Employers often base a starting salary on someone’s previous earnings, so at each job, the gender pay gap continues, and it becomes seemingly impossible for women to catch up.

“Women are told they are not worth as much as men,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, before he died last month. “Allowing prior salary to justify a wage differential perpetuates this message, entrenching in salary systems an obvious means of discrimination.”

What if job applicants don’t live in one of the places where asking about salary history is banned? Some experts recommend that they find ways to politely deflect, although refusing to answer an interview question can be risky. Workshops by the American Association of University Women suggest some strategies.

Applicants could turn the question back on the employer by asking for the position’s salary range, or what the last person to do the job was paid. Applicants could say something like: “I want to learn more about the job first, in order to have a better sense of my salary expectations.” Or they could provide context for why they’re declining to share the information, by explaining that it contributes to the gender pay gap.

Salary history bans can also have a less expected effect: When employers don’t rely on past pay as a proxy for how valuable someone is, they might consider a wider variety of candidates. A recent working paper was based on an experiment in an online job marketplace: Half of employers could see applicants’ past pay and half could not. The employers who could not see past pay viewed more applications, asked candidates more questions and invited more for interviews. The candidates they hired had, on average, lower past wages, and struck better deals when they negotiated.