The National Women's Law Center found women in California are paid on average 85-cents for every dollar earned by a man, well-above the national average of 77-cents.
But Hispanic women did not fare well, earning just 43 cents for every dollar paid to white non-Hispanic men.
California's results surprised Fatima Goss Graves with the Law Center.
Graves: "I hope that this is really a wake-up call for California and for other places as well that we can't just sort of sit back we really to move forward with some serious policy solutions so that in ten years the statistics don't look like this."
She says women, especially women of color, tend to be
concentrated in lower paid or minimum wage jobs.
She says a raise in the minimum wage would help close the
gender wage gap.