I figure I am getting the same brains for less money.” Her reaction to

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this was to feel flattered. It was a huge compliment to be told that she had the same brains as a man. It
would have been unthinkable for her to ask for equal compensation.

We feel even more grateful when we compare our lives to those of other women around the world.
There are still countries that deny women basic civil rights. Worldwide, about 4.4 million women and
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girls are trapped in the sex trade. In places like Afghanistan and Sudan, girls receive little or no
education, wives are treated as the property of their husbands, and women who are raped are routinely
cast out of their homes for disgracing their families. Some rape victims are even sent to jail for
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committing a “moral crime.” We are centuries ahead of the unacceptable treatment of women in these
countries.

But knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better. When
the suffragettes marched in the streets, they envisioned a world where men and women would be truly
equal. A century later, we are still squinting, trying to bring that vision into focus.

The blunt truth is that men still run the world. Of the 195 independent countries in the world, only
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17 are led by women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally. In the United
States, where we pride ourselves on liberty and justice for all, the gender division of leadership roles is
not much better. Women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States in the early
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1980s. Since then, women have slowly and steadily advanced, earning more and more of the college
degrees, taking more of the entry-level jobs, and entering more fields previously dominated by men.
Despite these gains, the percentage of women at the top of corporate America has barely budged over
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the past decade. A meager twenty-one of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Women hold about 14
percent of executive officer positions, 17 percent of board seats, and constitute 18 percent of our
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elected congressional officials. The gap is even worse for women of color, who hold just 4 percent of
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top corporate jobs, 3 percent of board seats, and 5 percent of congressional seats. While women
continue to outpace men in educational achievement, we have ceased making real progress at the top
of any industry. This means that when it comes to making the decisions that most affect our world,
women’s voices are not heard equally.

Progress remains equally sluggish when it comes to compensation. In 1970, American women were
paid 59 cents for every dollar their male counterparts made. By 2010, women had protested, fought,
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and worked their butts off to raise that compensation to 77 cents for every dollar men made. As
activist Marlo Thomas wryly joked on Equal Pay Day 2011, “Forty years and eighteen cents. A dozen
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eggs have gone up ten times that amount.”

I have watched these disheartening events from a front-row seat. I grad