In this op-ed, Lizet Ocampo, the political director of People For the American Way, explains the importance of equal pay to Latina women. Ocampo also oversees PFAW’s Next Up Victory Fund, which supports progressive candidates under 40 running for state and local office.

One of the most important “holidays” of the year is also one of the most troubling: Latina Equal Pay Day. This is the symbolic day when, on average, Latina and Hispanic women’s earnings catch up to what white men were paid the year before.

A Latina worker—who makes just 54 cents for every dollar paid to a non-Hispanic white man—has to work for nearly a full second year to receive the pay he took home in one. Let me repeat that: year after year, the average Latina woman is getting only about half of the paycheck for the same amount of work.

This is an absurd injustice that influences all other parts of our lives, from the ability to secure housing, pay for medical expenses, and pursue educational opportunities to the ability to pass along those same opportunities to children. Nearly six in ten Latina mothers are the breadwinners for their families, which means that unequal pay for Latina women contributes to economic insecurity for entire families across a lifetime.

The severity of pay inequity for Latina women specifically is sometimes overlooked in generalized discussions about the “gender pay gap” as a whole, which can mask deep inequalities between the median earnings of women of different races and ethnicities. When you group women of all backgrounds together, women are paid roughly 80% of what men are paid. But this is only one piece of the story. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, shows that the pay gap between Latina women and white women (a 26-point gap) is actually greater than the gap between white women and white men (a 20-point gap). Latina women face the lowest pay of any group, and we can only understand the full picture of pay inequity when we take into account both gender and race—in addition to other factors like age, gender identity, and disability status.

While the gender pay gap can feel like an issue that is too big, or too institutionalized, to take effective action on, there is at least one concrete step we can all take to push for change: pledging to only give our votes to political candidates who are committed to closing the pay gap. This applies to any level of elected office, from your local council member to your member of Congress.

Ask your Senate or House candidate if they support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would strengthen workplace protections for women and help address pay discrimination. Ask if they support core economic justice policies like paid family leave time, affordable childcare, and a higher minimum wage. If it's a local or state candidate? Ask about their plan to address the persistent problem of pay inequity, especially for women of color, in their own city or state.

And although we need to be clear that all elected officials need to address this problem, it’s also critical that we make sure we support Latina candidates who can bring their unique perspective and insight to the process of addressing this challenge. For Latina workers, missing out on half the pay while still performing all the work is an urgent policy issue—one that our elected representatives should be working assiduously to fix. But we will only be able to close the pay gap when we have elected leaders in all levels of office who represent Latina workers and will make it a priority to stand up for women’s economic equality.

Editor's note: This piece was updated to remove a mention of the 2017 elections in California.

Related: How Latinx Teens are Connecting With Nature at America's National Monuments

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