Unlike in real life, telenovelas are promoting a prominent role for the female domestic worker in the predominantly middle class and wealthy families that employ her, a Cinderella story of sorts. But that is just a fairy tale.

“It’s been hard,” says a domestic worker who is struggling to organize and bring the country in line with the region. “The women are afraid and they have been told that if you’re a labor organizer you’re going to get killed.”

Construction work might seem worlds away from a U.S. cabinet perch, but both represent fields where women are creating new opportunities for others to follow. While the shift is too slow, we can speed things up. Here’s how.

Melissa Mark-Viverito leads a progressive City Council and personally exemplifies the city’s ethnic leadership. At the same time she notes a sharp decline in female representation on the council. “This obviously represents a problem,” she says in this Q & A interview.

On Equal Pay Day, a Teen Voices videographer in Washington, D.C., finds out what her classmates think of the gap and their suggestions to fix the problem.

Lower-income child care centers have caregivers who in addition to caring for the children are also required to be the janitors. As elite pre-K programs know, that’s inappropriate for students who are building neurological connections at a rate of 700 to 1,000 every second.

Their ranks are small but growing, and they want their government to join an international labor treaty. “If we organize, we can help each other,” says a 25-year-old housekeeper who started working when she was 10 and earns $75 a month.

It could account for 7 percent to 10 percent of the wage gap but there’s so little data it’s hard to know. After 5,000 New York school guards won a big settlement last year the family of one 45-year-old mother of two suddenly had $7,000 more a year.