The racialized element of the practice continues to this day: 53 percent of tipped workers in New York State are minorities, and 21 percent live at or below the poverty line. And most tipped workers are not fancy steakhouse servers; they are women working at places like IHOP, Applebee’s and Olive Garden. Based on American Community Survey data, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United estimates that nearly 70 percent of tipped restaurant workers are women, 40 percent of whom are mothers.

The subminimum wage for tipped workers also enshrines pay inequity for a predominantly female work force, perpetuating the gender pay gap. For African-American female servers, the disparity is even greater: ROC United calculates that they earn only 60 percent of what male servers are paid, costing those women more than $400,000 over a lifetime.

Worse still, this two-tiered system is the reason the restaurant industry is the single largest source of sexual harassment claims in the United States. Women forced to live on tips are compelled to tolerate inappropriate and degrading behavior from customers, co-workers and managers in order to make a living. So while restaurants employ about seven percent of American women, nearly 37 percent of all sexual harassment claims to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission come from restaurants.

The seven states, including California, that have adopted minimum wage parity for tipped workers are faring better on almost every measure than the other 43, including New York. They have higher sales per capita, as well as higher restaurant job growth; some even have higher rates of tipping by customers.

There is no reason that New York State cannot join the ranks of the states that have demanded that this industry pay its own workers a livable wage. The former New York senator — and now presidential candidate — Hillary Rodham Clinton supports eliminating the tipped minimum wage.

Last week, Governor Cuomo, who has championed women’s equality in the past, called New York the “progressive capital of this nation.” But as long as this unfair system that dates from the days of slavery persists, neither progressivism nor women’s equality will be realized.