“If we don’t make these investments, we are going to lose a generation of women from the workforce,” said French Gates. Part of that effort involves encouraging young girls, “particularly at middle school,” to keep going with math, science, and technology. “We have to make more progress getting women graduating with more computer science degrees because technology is running our lives these days,” she said.

French Gates pointed out the importance of role models and mentors. She said she herself owes much to her parents (her father was an aerospace engineer and her mother helped run the family’s small real-estate investment business), who taught her the value of hard work, and to a high school teacher who introduced her to the world of computers and “taught us that we could learn anything.”

She singled out Bader Ginsberg as another important source of inspiration.

“[Ginsburg’s] quote of saying ‘Women belong at all places where decisions are being made,’ that rings in my ear,” said Gates. “She also said if you are going to fight for something, lead in a way that others will join you. And what I see is when we fight for gender equality or we fight for people of color, you have to come together with a mixed group. It takes men and women to advance gender equality, it takes people of all types to advance social equity issues for everybody. And so you have to lead in a collaborative way, and she knew that. While she was setting policy and law, she also saw how to fight the fight, and that is helpful for me.”

During an hourlong panel discussion earlier in the afternoon, women from the fields of academia, politics, and business explored the structural and systemic changes needed to make gender equity a reality.

Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of TIAA, said she is pushing for more transparency around compensation, urging states to do away with wage-secrecy policies in order to help level the pay field and calling for corporations across the country to “elevate women at every level.” Moving more women into leadership roles and expanding candidate pools for prospective employees are two critical ways to ensure greater equity in the boardroom and beyond, she said.

“We need new ways to identify talented women and get them into the pipeline,” said Duckett. She said policies that help women, who often have to drop out of the workforce, will ensure greater parity.

U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams represents Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District — the seat previously held by Civil Rights hero John Lewis. Williams, who also serves as chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, said she is buoyed by the number of women serving in the 177th Congress — more than 140 in total. “We are building political power across the country,” she said. But the work isn’t done, said Williams, who tries to encourage women to run for office whenever she can. “The more women candidates we have, the better chances we have of electing women,” she said.

When it comes to structural change, Williams said policies like paid family leave and universal family care are vital. Recalling Lewis’ famous rallying cry, Williams said the work will require “getting into good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Iris Bohnet, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, director of the Women and Public Policy Program, and academic dean at Harvard Kennedy School, believes redesigning a variety of systems across a range of sectors can help drive change. For example, she said, firms should reframe their performance appraisal system and consider rethinking their use of employee self-evaluations. Bohnet said her research has found that people differ in their ability to shine a light on themselves, and that the differences are systematic and based on culture, gender, and race.

“Based on our research, multiple organizations across the sectors now have decided to stop sharing self-evaluations with managers,” she said; instead, they are developing “a different path to evaluating an employee’s performance that is both more accurate and more fair.” Other ways companies can attract and promote female candidates include eliminating “gendered language in job advertisements,” relying less in interviews on impressions and more on work-sample tests, and re-envisioning meetings to ensure that “people’s contributions count and that everyone is given credit for their comments,” she said.

Bohnet also noted that domestic violence, which she called a “shadow pandemic” worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, poses a great threat to gender equity. She called for researchers and others to be “more transparent” and share information across different sectors.

All the panelists agreed that men need to be part of the solution and join women as key allies in their fight for equity. Williams compared gender equity struggles to the Civil Rights Movement, during which a range of allies protested in support of racial equality. Men need to “speak up when they know things are not right,” she said, and speak up for women “when we aren’t even in the room.”

Recognizing that there is real disparity “across different segments of women” is also key to the fight for equity, said Duckett. “As we look at the data, as we look at the accountability and as we look at the policies and practices, we have to make sure that it is working and that it is impactful for everyone, understanding that there are unique differences across women as a whole.