The House just passed a bill to close the gender pay gap

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House Democrats easily passed the Paycheck Fairness Act on Wednesday — their latest in a long series of attempts to make sure women and men are paid equally. The final vote was 242-187. Democrats were joined by seven Republicans.

To give you a sense of how long bill author Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has been fighting for this cause, she first introduced the bill in 1997.

“Very simple concept: Men and women in the same job deserve the same pay,” DeLauro told Vox. “It used to be this was the fringe; it was a women’s issue, ‘Why do we have to deal with it?’”

A gender pay gap has long existed; women who work full time in the United States make, on average, 82 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make. And data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the gap has actually widened in the past four years.

House Democrats last passed DeLauro’s bill when they were in the majority in 2009 (it failed the next year in the Senate). Now back in the majority, they have a rare opportunity to pass a bill that has struggled to gain momentum in both chambers when it’s come up. Even though DeLauro and labor experts say a pay equity bill should be bipartisan, the Paycheck Fairness Act has languished out of the spotlight when Republicans have been in power.

Democrats are hoping the momentum of the #MeToo movement and a historic number of women in Congress will give this idea new life.

“This is historic. Rosa has been introducing this bill forever,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the House Democratic Caucus on Tuesday, according to an aide present. “But public sentiment — public, social media, and all the rest — with help us with this.”