Are we at the point where we can move beyond the issues of gender equality, especially for millennial and younger women making their way in the world of politics or business? Some days it seems so. Headlines abound with reports on the ‘generational schism’ between young women and older women with regard to democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Secretary Clinton is popular among older women, many of whom feel that putting a woman in the White House would be an unparalleled victory in a decades-long fight. But she is less popular among younger women, who have expressed that gender is not so important to them as to merit supporting a given candidate. This divide recently came to a head at a rally where former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joined Secretary Clinton on the stage. Albright summed up her speech with a phrase she has been using for 25 years: “Just remember,” she said, “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Secretary Albright’s words instantly provoked much ire online. After demands for retraction, she penned an op-ed in the New York Times apologizing for appearing to ‘tell a large group of women to go to hell.’ I can appreciate why she chose to apologize, but I don’t think she needed to. I recently attended the HeForShe Conference at NYU Shanghai, put on by the Shanghai American Chamber of Commerce and the Program on Creativity + Innovation. The conference featured a cross-section of industry leaders, who discussed steps their organizations have taken to advance women, challenges they have encountered, and the key strategies for overcoming those challenges. I asked the panelists how millennials like myself entering the workforce in an age of ‘genderless’ society, with unprecedented approaches to gender identities and the sense that we have progressed beyond sexism, can champion gender equality when many entering the workforce think this issue is outdated. In his answer, one panelist suggested framing the issue as a broad one that affects us all in the workplace, and to focus on empowering each individual to achieve their worth regardless of gender, because we all have a stake in the organization’s success. Basically, “Try your best.” After the panel ended, the moderator followed up with me. She shared how my question reminded her of when she was first entering the workforce. When she graduated from Wellesley College (a small liberal arts university for women) in 1990, she said, she felt that the glass ceiling was a thing of the past. “There was no glass ceiling. I could do everything, and women everywhere had the whole world at their fingertips. That’s how we all felt,” she reflected. Listening to her, I was reminded of the attitudes espoused by my female peers and the young women interviewed about considering gender in this election. “But then it happens,” she said slowly. “You don't realize there's a glass ceiling until you hit your head on it.” Her words made me realize the danger in millennial attitudes I have witnessed towards gender equality. Young women seem to believe the hurdles we need to overcome for gender equality have been conquered. While we have won some battles, we haven’t won the war. The fact is we aren’t proceeding along any trend lines that result in gender equality any time soon. According to a recent report from Ernst & Young, if current trends continue, it will take almost 80 years to achieve gender equality in the workplace. A commonly espoused counterpoint is that more women are going to college and working, which is filling the pipeline, so eventually, their ascensions will balance the gender representation in top roles. It is true that more women are getting into the pipeline, but they aren’t reaching the top. They are actually shrinking in representation at every higher level. And this situation exists in most regions of the world without much in the way of new, innovative ideas on what to do about it. One exception is Scandinavia, where five countries (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark) have passed legislation that sets goals for gender equality in the boardroom. But a recent McKinsey report on Asia notes that women account for almost half of all entry-level professionals, but only 6.5 percent of board positions on average. The numbers are slightly higher in Europe, but not much: women there average 17 percent of board positions. Worryingly, these numbers are not likely to change substantially: of the top executives McKinsey surveyed in Asia, 70 percent said gender equality was not a top ten priority. In Europe, 47 percent felt the same. In the United States, the gender gap persists in the boardroom and in politics. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report last year revealed that women hold 10 percent of board positions on listed companies in the United States. In that same report, the United States ranked 72nd out of 145 countries in the political gender gap index, scoring 0.162, with zero being perfect inequality and one being perfect equality. While the overall score for the United States, 0.740, was relatively high, in the last ten years of tracking by the WEF, that score rose by 0.036 – barely budged, in other words. All this indicates the future of gender equality is uncertain and far into the future under any existing scenarios. Yet the sense I get from my female peers today is that if we work hard, the sky is the limit. There’s a prevailing belief that there was a glass ceiling for our mothers, but now things have changed. I want to believe this too, but it’s not clear that this is true. And if we don’t start building another narrative to drown this one out, we will be in for a rude awakening when we too find our heads hitting that glass ceiling. Each generation builds the movements that define them. For millennials, among those will be climate change and financial security. Another needs to be advancing gender equality. To mistake Secretary Clinton for a symbol of a movement that has accomplished its goals is to dangerously deceive ourselves. We should not resist re-affirming the causes championed by our mothers because we do not want to accept an inconvenient truth. Moreover, we should not engage in fantasies that there are women lining up for the presidency and being shooed into top roles at corporations, and conclude that gender inequality is, therefore, less deserving of our attention, when studies suggest the opposite. Finally, young women who plan to enter the private sector should not underestimate the impact of putting a woman in the White House on corporate America. Governments can influence policies, such as equal pay and paid family leave, which impact greatly opportunities for women’s advancement in the private sector. Secretary Clinton would fight harder for those issues than would her male peers. What wasn’t reported as much from Secretary Albright’s speech was her plea that there’s more work still to be done to break gender barriers. Madame Secretary is right. If we are to realize women’s full personal and economic potential, there is work still to be done. This work will require us – now, in this election, and in the future – to do our part to make organizations more reflective of the workforce and more equal. She may not always, but in this case, mother knows best. Young women would do well for our gender and for our country to act accordingly. This article was written by Laura de Crescenzo. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Robert Neubecker for The New York Times