If you’re at a job interview and someone asks how much money you currently make, do not answer the question.

This advice comes from equal pay icon Lilly Ledbetter and New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray, as well as experts in salary negotiation. Soon it’ll be codified into law in New York.

Starting in October, employers in New York will no longer be allowed to ask job applicants for their salary history. The reasoning behind the prohibition is fairly intuitive. If you’re underpaid at your current job and your new employer bases your new salary on your old one, you’ll still wind up behind. With every raise at work offered as a percentage of your current salary, you never catch up. Even if you switch into a new industry, you carry your low pay with you.

“You could be set up for a lifetime of lower pay,” said McCray, wife of New York mayor Bill DeBlasio. “What New York has done is try and change the grim reality for women.” Nationwide women on average earn about 80 percent of what men make. Women of color face wider gaps.

Ledbetter, whose own pay discrimination lawsuit against Goodyear led to a new federal law on equal pay, said that she believed this law could’ve helped her when she was starting out.

Instead, after 19 years of working as a manager at The Goodyear Tire and Rubber company in Alabama she learned she was making far less than her male peers and had been for the entire time she was with the company. Ledbetter’s suit went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against her in a 5-4 decision that turned on a technicality ― she waited too long to sue.

The Lilly Ledbetter Act, the first piece of legislation signed by President Barack Obama, eliminated that technicality. Ledbetter who was 70 when the law was signed never was able to recover the wages she lost after all those years.

Pres. Obama and Lilly Ledbetter at the White House last year on the 7th anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (Photo: Mark Wilson via Getty Images)

She emphasized to HuffPost how important it is to get paid equitably at the outset of your career or otherwise suffer a lifetime of under-earning. “This goes on for the rest of your life,” she said. “In my case, my retirement, my 401(k) and my Social Security is based on those low wages that I earned.”

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It’s going to take more than a law banning a question, however, to ensure women are paid fairly. Though certainly human resource departments around the city are revamping job applications and gearing up for the change, the question is common and is certain to endure.

So what do you do? “I’d respond with a question,” Ledbetter says. Ask what the salary range is for the job or simply, “Why do you need to know?”

It’s probably not a great idea to come right out and tell an interviewer the question is illegal, unless you can figure out a way to do it with humor, says Deborah Kolb, the author of the book Negotiating at Work: Turn Small Wins Into Big Gains.

The better strategy is to turn the question around. “You say, ‘let me tell you what I’d like to make” or “ask, ‘how is this relevant?’” says Kolb, a professor emerita at Simmons College in Boston who advises many top executives on their careers.

She emphasized that you’ll have to do some research ahead of the conversation to figure out what a company typically pays, but emphasized that questions about salary history are best left unanswered. “The question really traps you from the very first job you take,” she said.

But fewer and fewer employers are allowed to ask. California, Philadelphia and Massachusetts have all passed laws similar to New York’s and about 20 other municipalities are considering their own legislation.

In New York, women comprise half of the city’s labor force, but according to U.S. Census data analyzed for a 2016 report from the city’s public advocate, they continue to lag behind. White women make on average 84 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. The wage gaps for minority women in New York are even wider than they are nationally: black women make just 55 percent of what white men earn. Hispanic women earn 46 percent.

(Photo: New York City Public Advocates Office)

The new question-ban salary laws were passed relatively recently so there’s not yet hard data on their effectiveness, however there is plenty of information out there that documents that women are paid less than men ― even when you control for experience, education and occupation.

And, we know that the pay gap between men and women widens as women get older. When women are just starting out they earn about 90 percent of what men make. The longer women stay in the workforce the farther behind they fall. By the time they turn 45 they’re making about 55 percent as much, a new analysis reported last weekend in the New York Times revealed. That’s due in large part because women become mothers and slow or stall their careers or because their managers believe they’re going to become mothers and don’t promote them.

But it’s also because their lower salaries follow them around like a bad credit score.

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Viola Davis

In a 2016 interview with Mashable, Viola Davis discussed the pay gap and how a big fight for women of color is first to be paid equally to her white female counterparts. "With me as an actress of color, I have to say to probably contradict myself, that [the pay gap is] not something I think about on a daily basis," she said. "Because the struggle for us as women of color is just to be seen the same as our white female counterparts."



"What are you telling your daughter when she grows up?" Davis added. "'You've got to just understand that you’re a girl. You have a vagina, so that’s not as valuable.'"



Head over to Mashable to read Davis' full interview.

Sandra Bullock

In a 2015 interview with Variety, Sandra Bullock discussed why we need more than equal pay to truly level the playing field for women in Hollywood. “It’s a bigger issue than money,” she said. “I know we’re focused on the money part right now. That’s just a byproduct.”



“Once we start shifting how we perceive women and stop thinking about them as ‘less than,’ the pay disparity will take care of itself," Bullock said.



Head here to read the rest of the interview.

Beyoncé

In a recent interview with ELLE, Beyoncé made her views on gender inequality and the pay gap very clear. "When we talk about equal rights, there are issues that face women disproportionately," Bey said. "If your son can do it, your daughter should be able to."



The feminist pop star wrote about this same issue in 2014 in a powerful essay for The Shriver Report. "Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change," Bey wrote. "Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect."



Head over to ELLE to read the rest of Beyoncé’s interview.

Carli Lloyd

In April, star midfielder of the U.S. Women's National Soccer team Carli Lloyd wrote a powerful op-ed in The New York Times addressing the wage gap that exists between women pro soccer players and their male counterparts. The essay was published just a month after five players from the U.S. national women's team filed a wage-discrimination complaint against U.S. Soccer.



"We can’t right all the world’s wrongs, but we’re totally determined to right the unfairness in our field, not just for ourselves but for the young players coming up behind us and for our soccer sisters around the world," Lloyd wrote. "Simply put, we’re sick of being treated like second-class citizens. It wears on you after a while. And we are done with it."



Head over to The New York Times to read Lloyd's full essay.

Melissa Harris-Perry

In a 2013 segment of her former MSNBC show, Melissa Harris-Perry broke down exactly why it's so important that we close the wage gap.



“Seventy-seven is how many cents women working full time currently make for every dollar men are paid. $11,084 is the yearly wage gap created by that pay deficit between full-time working men and women,” Harris-Perry said. “Sixty-four cents is how much African-American women are paid for every dollar men earn, showing that women of color are more impacted by these unequal pay disparities.”



Watch the full segment here.

Emma Watson

In a March 2016 interview with Esquire, Emma Watson discussed the gender pay gap and reminded everyone why it's so important to speak up about. "We are not supposed to talk about money, because people will think you’re 'difficult' or a 'diva,'" Watson said.



Head over to Esquire to read Watson's full interview.

Jennifer Lawrence

In an October 2015 essay for Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter, Jennifer Lawrence wrote about her experience with pay inequality. She wrote that she didn’t want to be deemed “difficult” or “spoiled” by demanding more money.



"When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn't get mad at Sony," Lawrence wrote. "I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early."



“I’m over trying to find the ‘adorable’ way to state my opinion and still be likable! Fuck that,” she wrote.



Read the rest of Lawrence's essay here.

Nicki Minaj

In a May 2015 interview with Cosmopolitan, Nicki Minaj urged young women to talk about how much they're paid in order to close the wage gap.



"Women are uncomfortable talking about money. I know it's taboo to discuss it at work," Minaj said. "You have to ask questions. 'What is this person getting?' Do your research. I've always been pretty competitive in terms of my pay."



Head over to Cosmo to read Minaj's full interview.

Jessica Chastain

Jessica Chastain spoke out in support of Jennifer Lawrence's essay on the wage gap in a 2015 interview with Variety. "There’s no excuse," Chastain said. "There’s no reason why [Jennifer Lawrence] should be doing a film with other actors and get paid less than her male costars. It's completely unfair."



In an October 2015 interview with The Huffington Post, Chastain added that she's experienced the gender wage gap herself. "Someone wrote an article once that said I made a certain amount of money for ‘The Martian.’... I made less than a quarter of that in reality, so there is a huge wage gap in the industry," she said.



Head over to Variety to read the rest of Chastain's interview.

Salma Hayek

At Variety's Power of Women luncheon in October 2015, Salma Hayek gave a riveting speech on gender equality and the importance of closing the wage gap. "[Women] are 66 percent of the work power of the world. However, we only get 10 percent of the income of the world," she said. "This is really, really sad and tragic."



"We are such an economical power, women in the country," she added. "We represent such a strong part of the audience that they cannot ignore us anymore."



Head over to Access Hollywood to read the rest of Hayek's remarks.

Judy Greer

In an op-ed for Glamour, Judy Greer called bullshit on the gender pay gap. “In the past few months, I’ve become convinced of one thing: If I were a man, I’d be paid more,” she wrote.



"In Hollywood I can continue to fight for more movies and TV shows -- with bigger budgets -- that value women," Greer wrote. "Women who are more than arm candy. Women who are layered and flawed, just like us. Women who kick ass. And yes, women who get paid for it.”



Head to Glamour to read Greer's full essay.

Rosario Dawson

In a November 2015 interview with MTV, Rosario Dawson talked about how the pay gap is different for women of color. "It’s a very complex situation when you think about what are black women making in comparison to white women, what are Latin women making, what are Asian women making in comparison," she said. "And it gets even more convoluted."



"Male, female, young or old, when people aren’t properly being paid for the job, what that does for their children and their access and opportunities… it just builds up," Dawson added. "Generationally we’re impacting people and I hope that that changes."



Head over to MTV to read the rest of Dawson's interview.

Carey Mulligan

In a November 2015 interview with Deadline, Carey Mulligan applauded Jennifer Lawrence for speaking up about the wage gap.



"I think it’s a good thing for someone like Jennifer to speak out; it means an awful lot to women," Mulligan said. "...[The discrepancy] is inherently unfair and she has an enormous platform to speak out against it. Men in Hollywood look up to her because she is powerful. She’s using that platform to correct something that isn’t right."



Head over to Deadline to read the entire interview.

Patricia Arquette

In her now-iconic acceptance speech after winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2015, Patricia Arquette made a passionate plea to close the pay gap.



Arquette expanded on her speech in a November 2015 interview with The Huffington Post. “Basically what I was saying is I don’t know why women are never a part of the conversation,” she said. “The women’s movement hasn’t moved at all. ... We don’t talk about women at all. They’re the invisible part of our whole nation, so I was appealing to our great activist leaders to help women, to remember us, to lend their hand, and maybe that’s not my place to say.”



Head here to hear more from Arquette's follow-up interview.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.