We all have an inherent bias against women. Yes, women included. Women must prove, quantify, and excel to plant their place in society.

A Yale research study gave male and female science professors two identical applications for a lab manager position. The only difference were the names: one half of the professors received a female name and the other half a male name. Both the male and female professors believed the male’s application to be better. In turn, the professors were more likely to hire him and offer a higher salary. With all factors equal, men excel due to the underlying view that they are more competent.

As expected, thousands of years of female oppression have sown their roots deep into the soil of human bias. By measuring advances in education, political influence, economics, and health, the World Economic Forum found that it will take another 97 years for the inequality gap between men and women to truly be closed.

While hiring quotas are now commonplace due to the advocacy of women, these strategies do not provide long-term solutions for gender bias in the workplace. The computer simulation study “Insidious Nonetheless: How Small Effects and Hierarchical Norms Create and Maintain Gender Disparities in Organizations” found that quotas for upper level leadership positions only fixed the lack of women in higher level positions for around 17 years. Then, men dominated these positions again while the amount of women exponentially decreased before stagnating.

That same study found that women’s successful projects were valued less. In addition to receiving harsher punishment for failure, they were penalized when exuding less feminine traits and forced to excel more to be assigned projects. Women must work harder to prove themselves as competent as men, but are ridiculed when they embody the same traits that make men successful.

As I begin approaching the time that my female peers and I will enter the workforce, subconscious bias against women feels discouraging. How are we supposed to grow in a workplace where bias against women has rotted the soil?

When we go through our days we need to call out bias when we see it. Call your peers out when female voices in your club meeting are being ignored. Listen to female voices when they tell you there is a problem.

Calling out and actively changing unconscious bias is hard and can have consequences. But feminism has grown on the soil of women who were not afraid of ridicule and embraced civil disobedience. We must actively work to pull the weeds of gender bias and plant seeds of equity.