By Maggie Mallon
One such arena where that occurs? The entertainment industry. Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez has seen first hand how easily women in Hollywood can miss out on earning their rightful wages. As someone who fought to get her foot in the door—and make sure she wasn’t typecast in stereotypical Latina roles—Rodriguez was so grateful when she landed her breakout role, she didn’t even consider questioning how her pay might compare to other actors’. But now as women throughout the country are speaking out about the pay gap, Rodriguez wants to be right there alongside them, as an ally and an activist fighting for women and the pay that they deserve. And the matter becomes all the more pressing when it’s applied on a broad scale. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy research, closing the pay gap would add $513 billion to the economy each year and lift over 3 million women and their families out of poverty.
Ahead of Equal Pay Day—AKA today, April 4—Rodriguez partnered with LUNA (the brand behind the nutrition bars you may or may not have in your desk drawer right now) to bring awareness to the gender pay gap and continue moving forward in her mission to close it. It’s an issue that’s especially personal to Rodriguez: Latina women face the largest pay gap and earn just 54 percent of what white men earn annually (African American women follow closely behind at 63 percent). Glamour recently caught up with the CW star to talk about her collaboration with LUNA, how the pay gap has affected her own career, and what she would say to anyone who might deny that it exists.
