Since the actress Patricia Arquette made a stand for equal pay for women when she accepted her Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2015, the gender wage gap has been discussed repeatedly in the media. One of the questions that keeps coming up is, does the gender wage gap really exist?

A new study from the Economic Policy Institute says the gap is real, according to CBS News.

To those deniers, economists have an answer: The data clearly show that women are paid less than men for doing the same work, even after controlling for issues such as education and experience. One of the reasons why some may debate its existence is that the gap can be measured in different ways, although the results consistently show depressed earnings for women, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

The study, conducted by Elise Gould, Jessica Schieder and Kathleen Geier, “examines the evidence surrounding the gender pay gap, both in the literature and through our own data analyses.”

The authors say that there are a number of ways to measure the gender pay gap and that those different methods often come up with different figures to indicate the size of the gap.

They add:

The presence of alternative ways to measure the gap can create a misconception that data on the gender wage gap are unreliable. However, the data on the gender wage gap are remarkably clear and (unfortunately) consistent about the scale of the gap. In simple terms, no matter how you measure it, there is a gap.

The study finds that the size of the gap can vary depending on the income level of workers, but the gap exists at all pay levels.

While the findings come as no surprise to us, this is important work. The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that it exists. Now that we have evidence of the problem, let’s put our efforts behind closing the gap.