Women's History Month is a time to reflect on the achievements of women, but some will say it's also a time not to rest on their laurels. With Equal Pay Day coming up in a little more than two weeks, Diane King Hall filed this report for our Women's History Month coverage. 

Wall Street is no longer a man's world, and Meg McClellan has been climbing the proverbial ladder to the top.

She's now the Global Head of Fixed Income Strategies for JPMorgan's Asset Management business.

She didn't always know the ropes. 

"I knew that on Wall Street we got a bonus, but I figured it was a couple hundred dollars. And I was a top performer so I sat down with my boss at the end of the year and so he hands me a bonus and says, 'Megan, you know you had a great year, star performer. This is your bonus.' And I looked at it, and I said, 'There is a terrible mistake. I can't possibly have earned this,'" McClellan says.

That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement, though. 

According to Bloomberg Business, female business school graduates who took jobs in finance in 2014 earned an average of nearly $22,000 dollars less than their male counterparts. There are some outliers, but no matter how you slice the cheese, women on average are still getting paid less. 

"That gap, in my mind, exists because if you take the first offer given to you, you haven't negotiated for the best starting pay and that puts you at a disadvantage," says McClellan. 

Harvard-educated Vanessa DeLuca is the editor-in-chief at Essence Magazine. 

"Companies need to start looking at these salary inequities, and really taking a deeper dive into what that's about, and should be paying people what they're worth," De Luca says.

Meanwhile, McClellan concedes that discrimination is a reality.

"While I recognize it exists, it's something I can't control. What I can control is my performance, my negotiating skills, knowing my market value, and doing the best at my job," she says.

To bridge the gap De Luca says ask questions.

"You might even ask the question is there information in HR that can show me the broad range of what this particular category should earn, and do that not just internally, but externally as well," says De Luca.

To get more women to boost their earning power, and into the C-suite, McLellan says don't let loyalty short-circuit your paycheck, and De Luca says gather the data, and quantify your worth.