This week everyone was talking about "House of Cards" -- not because Netflix just dropped a new season on us, but because a star of the series, Robin Wright, dropped her own personal bombshell at an event in New York.

The actress revealed that she recently demanded to be paid the same as her costar Kevin Spacey for her work on the show, The Huffington Post first reported Tuesday. And her bosses complied. She spoke candidly to a roomful of activists and philanthropists at the Rockefeller Foundation about the horrid fact that women make less than men in the United States.

One might be inclined to roll their eyes at the revelations of a superstar. Wright is just the latest female entertainment figure to speak up about pay inequality. Patricia Arquette did it to much fanfare -- and inevitable criticism -- at the Oscars in 2015, accepting an award for her work on Boyhood. Jennifer Lawrence spoke out after Sony was hacked later that year, revealing an enormous pay gap throughout Hollywood.

These are the cries of the privileged few, you might say. What does this matter to us mortals?

Turns out it does matter. A lot. These well-known actresses opened up a conversation about equal pay that spread across the country over the past year and a half, inspiring women to look into their own pay, even ask for raises. But more than that -- the stars were the galvanizing force behind a rash of new state laws that have sprung up protecting womens right to equal pay for equal work. These laws serve to protect all working women from being underpaid relative to their male counterparts.