Today is Equal Pay Day. Here's what the gender wage gap looks like in Maryland

BALTIMORE -- Tuesday marks Equal Pay Day, which marks how far into the year a woman must work to earn what a man earned in the previous year.

According to the Department of Labor, women make about 86 cents for each dollar a man makes in Maryland. The state's average gender wage gap is above the national average by three cents, according to the Department of Labor data.

Though it's progress, some labor unions are demanding more to eliminate the gap entirely.

Kenya Campbell represents a local labor union called AFT Maryland. She said racism and sexism still pose barriers for women in the workforce.

"Honestly, women earn less money because they've been disvalued," Campbell said. "They have been looked at as being lesser than men. The work responsibilities that they typically worked in the past, men feel they should still be in those positions. I mean, just forgotten about."

The gap is even greater for women of color.

According to Bankrate, Latinas face the largest pay gap by making on average 65 cents to every White male's dollar. Black women make 71 cents on the dollar.

According to the Pew Research Center, the nationwide gender wage gap has not changed much in two decades.

The only noticeable change was for the age group of 25 to 34, Pew Research found.

In 1982, this age group on average was looking at 74 cents for every dollar a man made. By 2022, the average was 92 cents.

One of the reasons why the gap persists is because of higher education.

According to Bankrate, men still dominate in undergraduate majors with the highest earning potential, like engineering and computer science.

But women are overrepresented in lower-paying jobs like teaching and social work.

Campbell said to tackle this gap women need to have more collective bargaining power to negotiate higher salaries.

"We can talk about across the board raises, just not going to men, she said. "It's going to those who are young. It will go to women. It will go to men. Everybody will get the raise. So being able to actually sit at the table and negotiate would really make a difference with those wage gaps."

When it comes to negotiating, Bankrate advises women to research the salary ranges for their role and to not hesitate to ask for more.