Long before Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg “leaned in” there was Mary Tyler Moore. Moore’s passing at the age of 80 last month brought back a lot of memories for women in business, especially journalists, including this one.

As Mary Richards, Moore’s portrayal of an unmarried, female television producer at a small Minneapolis station on the 1970s Mary Tyler Moore Show, she inspired a whole generation of women who work. Broadcast journalists, like NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and CBS’ Jane Pauley, recently reminisced about how Moore’s character was a role model for them as they attempted to break into the news business.

Mary’s weekly encounters with her gruff but lovable boss Lou Grant, were emblematic of what a lot of women were experiencing on the job some 45 years ago, especially when it came to equal treatment and equal pay. In one episode Mary asks why her predecessor earned more money than she does and Lou replies, “Because he was a man.”

It got a big laugh at the time, but just like the Mary Tyler Moore Show “sometimes it was laugh or cry.”

While the pay needle has moved since the 1970s there’s still a big gap to close. According to a recent Forbes article titled “4 Things You Didn’t Know About The Gender Pay Gap,” a recent study revealed “that women still make about 20 percent less than men for doing the same jobs.” And when the study drilled down to salaries for medical professionals, it showed that male ophthalmologists make 36 percent more than their female counterparts.

We here at VM know a thing or two about how women in the industry feel about working in the optical business. For more than 15 years, we’ve been interviewing them for Vision Monday’s signature report, Influential Women in Optical. The importance of having a mentor is a recurring theme that we hear over and over. Someone who has helped paved the way before them, much like Mary Tyler Moore.