Mary Louise Kelly speaks to Vicki Shabo, Vice President of the National Partnership for Women and Families on the wage gap for women who are Latina.

While D.C. has historically had one of the lowest pay wage gaps in the nation, it remains stark: women make 90 cents to the dollar for men, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Those comments about women’s wages are true — according to a study done by the National Partnership for Women and Families, white women make 79 cents on a white man’s dollar. And according to the same study, black women make 60 cents on a white man’s dollar meanwhile hispanic women only make 55 cents.

As noted by the National Partnership For Women And Families in 2015, nearly 3 million family households in the U.S. are headed by Latinas and 40 percent of all Latina-headed family households live below the poverty line.

According to a new report by the National Partnership for Women & Families, this wage gap is responsible for women in the U.S. losing out on $500 billion per year.

“It is unacceptable that the wage gap has persisted, punishing the country’s women and families for decades,” wrote Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership, in a press release. “At a time when women’s wages are so critical to the economic well-being of families, the country is counting on lawmakers to work together to advance strong, fair and family friendly workplace policies that would promote equal pay.”

The National Partnership for Women and Families in Washington hailed the EEOC’s action as “very welcome” news. With the new data, the EEOC and the DOL “will be much better able to identify and stop wage discrimination of all kinds,” Debra Ness, the partnership’s president, said in a Jan. 29 statement.“This is a bold, important step that will capture salary data from employers that collectively employ more than 63 million workers,” Ness said, adding that there’s “no time to waste” in combating the pay gap.

In new analysis conducted by the National Partnership for Women & Families, the 77¢ to the dollar figure is a median for all women collectively. “Pay inequities and wage discrimination perpetuate poverty, and women of color suffer the most,” said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership. “In the very states in which most African-American women and Latinas work, the loss of critical income makes it much harder for them and their families to get ahead or even stay afloat.”