What will it take to really break barriers for women?

“We don’t need gatekeepers to make our dreams a reality.” That bold statement came from Lauren Simmons on Monday in Aspen, Colorado, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’m rooting for her, and young women everywhere, to help all of us bring that barrier-breaking spirit to life.

In March 2017, at just 23 years old, Lauren became the New York Stock Exchange’s youngest woman equity trader and only the second African American woman to hold that position in the exchange’s 227-year history. She joined me and several other leaders from the worlds of business, politics, tech, and sports for a conversation called “Breaking Barriers: Women Defining Leadership” at the 2019 Aspen Ideas Festival, where my firm is once again serving as a Knowledge Partner.

Despite the good progress that’s been made over the years in attitudes toward gender and diversity—and the excellent data my firm and others have produced to help drive that shift—Lauren and young women around the world have in many ways entered the same biased world of work that I did almost two decades ago.

According to our latest Women in the Workplace report, for instance, women in the US today are outnumbered five to one in the C-suite, and only 79 women for every 100 men are promoted to manager. Those numbers are even bleaker if you happen to be a woman of color. In the C-suite, we are outnumbered 25 to one, and only 60 Black women for every 100 men are promoted to manager.

Another member of our panel, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Business Development Peggy Johnson, can attest to the impact these trends can have on women’s advancement. An engineer by trade, Peggy explained that early in her career she almost convinced herself to leave the field because she wasn’t doing as well as she would have liked to on performance reviews.

“They were only rating me against things that I was never going to be good at,” Peggy recalled. “I would be changing my fundamental personality to be those things. But they weren’t giving me any points for teamwork, collaboration; things that weren’t on that performance rating.”

Peggy was fortunate, though. She had a manager at the time who became an ally of hers and lobbied for changes to her then-employer’s review rubric. Together, they created something more inclusive in the way it assessed leadership potential. “You shouldn’t have to change your fundamental self to give your best at work,” Peggy said.

Our research shows that women don’t receive that kind of support often enough. Managers are four percent less likely to help women navigate office politics than men, and women are also four percent less likely to be given the resources they need to succeed. In addition, 64 percent of women report being subjected to microaggressions, those unacceptable yet persistent everyday instances of sexism and racism.

More women-built, women-run businesses might be one way to help with these numbers. There again, however, the barriers to entry are especially high. Women make up only eight percent of US venture capitalists, and in 2018 all-women start-up teams received only two percent of US venture capital funding. You read that right—two percent.

So, yes, when you look at the state of the modern workplace, some progress has been made but barriers and gatekeepers certainly abound. Whenever I hear that a young woman like Lauren is undaunted by these challenges, it gives me—and I think all of us—reason to hope that things will change. There are others reasons, too.

We’re right now entering into a critical moment, where 40—160 million women and 60—275 million men may need to switch occupations by 2030, thanks to the way that automation will transform the economy. As part of this shift, some 164 million new jobs—or 10 percent of employment in 2030—could be created in entirely new occupations.

Imagine what that could mean for the future of women at work. If governments, companies, and individuals invest in the right training programs for women to develop the necessary skills; develop the support networks they need to boost labor mobility and flexibility; and improve their access to technology, the barriers women face today might finally become a relic of the past.

Before I sign off, I want to share one of the most inspiring moments of the session for me. The final “Breaking Barriers” panel focused on women in sports. It featured two football coaches, Jen Welter, who was the NFL’s first female coach, and Katie Sowers, an offensive assistant with my home team, the San Francisco 49-ers.

As I think about the future of gender and diversity, and the hard work and dedication it will require for us to drive change, it feels appropriate to give the final word here to someone who knows a thing or two about motivation and inspiration.

“Gender is just one of our differences; let’s not make it divide us,” Katie said. “Let’s have it make us a better unit as a whole. That’s the way we need to attack life—and build a better culture.”