A woman in the 21st century will feel the pressure of all female history before her. She will quickly learn how hard she must work in order to prove that she is worth being listened to. When she is a girl, she will reach for the stars in what her career is to be, because she knows that women before her didn’t have nearly the life — the choices — human decency — that we have today. 

She spends a week every month putting the same amount of work in — maybe working even harder — while enduring agonizing, at times crippling, pain with a smile on her face. She is to laugh off the remarks of a classmate, then a coworker flirting with her, because that’s the world we live in, and it’ll probably happen again before the days out. She is not only expected to be a top student and employee at all times, but is to look as though she isn’t breaking a sweat while doing so. 

Then before she knows it, she is titled a woman and thoughts of “ultimate goals” are tossed around — whether by her or by those around her. Because she has begun to learn that there is a ceiling of how far she can go before she is reminded that she is indeed a woman and that is less a role than a responsibility. She becomes more realistic than her male counterparts about professional opportunity and her future because the past says so. The dreams of a little girl remain just that — beautiful thoughts left out of her life as an adult.

A woman in the 21st century feels the pressure of all female history before her. Because there is no correct way to be a woman but there are a million and one wrong ways.