Gina Rodriguez Gets Real About Equal Pay Day: 'It's Not an Easy Conversation — but It's Necessary'

April 4 is Equal Pay Day, and Gina Rodriguez wants to make a change.

The actress is partnering up with LUNA bars to raise awareness about the gender wage gap and educate women on how they can battle it in their own lives.

The Jane the Virgin star admits that at first she was so happy be working as a “brown girl in the industry” that she didn’t think about the implications of Hollywood’s well-documented wage gap. But when she started learning about it, she realized she needed to get more involved.

“I wasn’t informed, I didn’t realize the extreme pay gap in certain states,” admits Rodriguez, 32. “I realized I wasn’t given this platform to stay quiet. And there’s always the conversation of, ‘Oh, is the pay gap because women work less because they’re moms?’ It’s like, ‘No, no, no, we’re talking about women that work just as much as men and get paid less.’ ”

Rodriguez adds that though it’s hard to face those conversations, all women are affected by it — and should ban together to bring about a solution.

“It’s a scary fact, but it’s a fact,” she says. “We need to understand that we are stronger together and the conversation needs to be had. The truth is every woman is affected by the gender pay gap, whether they believe it or not. It doesn’t need to be your problem in order to be a part of the solution.”

The brand is shining a spotlight on the pay gap by working alongside LeanIn.org’s #20PercentCounts campaign and offering 20 percent discount on all LUNA bars sold on their website through April 11. The 20 percent signifies the gap most women face when compared to their male counterparts’ salaries. The company will also match the discount amount up to $100,000 with a donation to fund salary negotiations workshops in partnership with the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

Rodriguez says the workshops are vital in getting women educated in the ways they can confront the disparity in their everyday lives.

“What we can do is we can champion women to get informed about how they can approach their employers for a raise, how they can have the confidence to even have those conversation and what they look like, when you should be having those conversations,” she says. “Being in workshops with other women to empower one another and champion one another through a situation that isn’t easy to do. It isn’t for me to do in my own profession!”

FROM COINAGE: 5 Financial Mistakes to Avoid in Your 20s

The actress is fortunate to star on a TV show that lets her advocacy work merge with her professional life. Jane the Virgin is known for tackling political and social issues — and Rodriguez says that’s no accident.

“On Jane I have the beautiful opportunity to create social awareness through entertainment without judgment and without alienating,” she says. “Women’s rights has been a common theme on our show — we’re able to squeeze the things that matter to us most in a way that’s comforting and safe, which is comedy. It’s led our fans to get more educated on things like immigration by watching the show.”

Above all, the actress hopes people will be encouraged to speak up about the issues they care about most, including the wage gap. “I believe that we should get paid based off our merits, not based off our gender or our race or our religion,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with the position we’re at now, as long as we’re talking about creating change. We will not create change if we stay quiet.”

Jane the Virgin airs Mondays (9 p.m. ET) on The CW.