In New York State, women working full-time still make only 89 cents for every dollar a man earns. Mothers make just 75 cents to the dollar. The gap for women of color is even wider: Black women in New York earn just 66 cents for every dollar a white man earns, and Latina women earn an astonishing 56 percent of what white men in New York earn.

There are two proposed pieces of legislation that would go especially far towards achieving pay equity. A.5308B / S.6549 would ban employers from asking for salary history—a practice that results in discrimination towards mothers and women of color especially, who have historically earned less. And A.8093A / S.5248B would mandate equal pay not just for equal work, but for substantially similar work, for all protected classes—including sex, race, and ethnicity.