Take this setting into consideration: the United States of America, late 2018. The country calls itself a global superpower; many of its 325.7 million residents call it the greatest in the world. It has a bustling global economy and is among the most developed nations in the world.

And still, she must persist.

She must persist as she has throughout history, for the world has never been kind to her. She has seen herself trapped in the home, burdened with a job and role she was simply given, never offered.

She has seen men let loose to govern, and lead, and decide, all without ever being asked why they were not in the same home in which she was told to remain. She has seen few women in roles as powerful as a pharaoh or monarch or president, but she has seen them.

She has seen them and the doubt and stigma they faced every day of their rule. She has seen much in her history, for she has been in all of history.

She has seen marches and demonstrations, riots and revolts. She has seen Women's Lib and the Women's March and all of the decades in between. She has seen war and peace, weakness and strength.

In short, she has seen it all.

Who is she? She is a woman. Not any one woman in particular, but rather the concept of woman in every form. This woman, who is no one, is also everyone because at some point all woman were her.

That is a very general, vague and perhaps confusing way to explain the experience of women in America. Yet, in some ways it makes perfect sense. All modern, 21st-century women stand on ground built and shaken by the women who came before them.

This is different for different groups of women- women of color have had to rise much higher than white women historically and are still often at a lesser position than their white counterparts in society. However, the general point still stands: women of today in many ways owe themselves to the women of yesterday.

That is why recent struggles and news stories are so hard to digest for so many people. The treatment of sexual abuse survivors not just in Hollywood or a Senate hearing but also in "everyday" life has often left me wondering if we have made any progress at all. It seems as though the struggles women faced fifty years ago are still faced by women today.

Women still are not believed; women still often have to defend their choice to work and not stay home with their children. Of course, not everything is as bad as it once was, but should that be the standard to which we hold ourselves?

Should anyone be content with "better, mostly" or "it could be worse?"

I don't think so. I think we can, and should and need to do better. We as a society can't be content with the way women are still treated in such a developed country.

This article opened with a description of a setting; our setting. And in that setting, we praise and glorify the women who persist through struggle and hardship to achieve and succeed.

But do we ever stop and think about how long we have spent doing just that? We have been congratulating women for decades, but have we helped them?

Have we helped each other? Or are we just in the same, constant cycle of congratulation and glorification without any real change?

The women who persisted throughout history should absolutely be applauded. But my hope is one day (and hopefully one day soon) women won't have to persist.

I hope one day soon we live in a setting in which women don't have to be celebrated for persisting because they can simply spend their time doing.