Last month the U.S. Census reported that the gender wage gap for Latinas is still jaw-droppingly huge. In fact, Latinas are paid just 56 cents to every dollar paid to white men. To put it another way: Latina’s have to work, on average, from January 1st of 2013 until October 8th of 2014 to earn what white men earned in 2013.

So this October, let’s join together to send a very loud message to Congress: It’s past time to close the gender wage gap. BOTH the Fair Minimum Wage Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act must pass.

The gender wage gap hurts everyone: Unequal pay hurts our economy. This is because when women — who make three-quarters of purchasing decisions in our consumer-fueled nation — don't have funds to spend in our local communities, in our neighborhoods, and in stores, then our whole economy suffers.

Latinas bear the biggest brunt of the gender wage gap. Median wages for Latinas in the United States are $30,209 per year, compared to median wages of $53,488 annually for white men — or a difference of $23,279 each year.

We need to close this gap. To be sure, raising the minimum wage will help. For instance, a $10.10 increase in the minimum wage would directly or indirectly raise the wages of 3.3 million Latina workers. In fact, raising the tipped wage (as proposed in the Fair Minimum Wage Act) is especially important to Latinas, who are overrepresented in tipped wage jobs such as servers and bussers. Tipped wage workers are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as other workers.

Raising the minimum wage doesn’t just help close the gender wage gap, it also helps our entire economy as a whole. Studies show that raising the minimum wage would create 85,000 new jobs in the United States. And the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago says a raise in the minimum wage would help our economy by increasing household spending nationwide by about $48 billion, even benefiting the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

But raising the minimum wage alone won’t end wage discrimination. We also need policies like the Paycheck Fairness Act, because among other things, it would prohibit employers from retaliating against workers who discuss salaries with colleagues and requires employers to prove that pay differences exist for legitimate, job-related reasons. 

*Take a moment right now to make sure your members of Congress know you want them to do everything in their power to pass the Fair Minimum Wage Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act!

Your voice is important. Let’s face it, opponents to the minimum wage are spending a lot of money trying to silence moms and low-wage workers so we need to be extra, extra, extra loud.

Together, our voices are powerful!

P.S. - Huge thanks to the National Partnership for Women & Families and the National Women's Law Center for crunching the numbers on how the wage gap impacts Latinas, their families, and communities. Read the National Partnership's new fact sheet here and NWLC's new fact sheet here.