April 12th is a nationally recognized holiday called “Equal Pay Day” that not many people know about. But what is it, exactly? It’s the day of the year that symbolizes how much more a woman would have to work to make the same amount of money that her male counterpart had made in the year before. So, essentially, women have to work 16 months and 12 days to make what a man makes in only 12 months. Insane, right? Equal Pay Day is an attempt to bring awareness to the problem that is the wage gap and to discuss how we as a unified country are going to fix it.

On average, a typical woman makes $0.79 to every $1.00 that a man makes. Not only is there a gap on average, but there is a larger gap across ethnic groups. An African American woman makes $0.60 to every $1.00 a man makes and a Hispanic woman makes $0.55 to every $1.00 a man makes. We need Equal Pay Day to bring awareness to this gap and to also allow women to begin to break the glass ceiling. This pay gap can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in a woman’s lifetime of working, just because she is paid a little less than a man in her position.

This past Equal Pay Day President Obama, being the man that he is, decided to commemorate the day by designating a new national monument (all about women’s equality, of course). This monument, located in Washington, D.C. and titled the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, has served as a headquarters for the National Woman’s Party for almost 85 years and is now permanently protected by the government due to its new status.

Not only do we have this new national monument, but women today are fighting harder than ever to be paid as equally as men are. For example, the U.S women’s national soccer team has recently filed a lawsuit that is fighting for them to be paid as equally as the men’s team is paid. Honestly, in my opinion, the women should be paid even more than the men. No offense to our men’s national team, but they definitely aren’t as good as the women’s team. Not only is the women’s team projected to rake in almost $17 million in profits in the year 2017, but the men’s team is actually projected to have a $1 million deficit in the same year (!!!).

We need Equal Pay Day now more than ever. Women deserve to be paid the same amount as men for the exact same work, if not even slightly better. President Obama and the U.S women’s national soccer team have both taken the steps in the right direction, but we as a country need to stand up and fight together to come up with a solution to this problem and get rid of the wage gap completely.