This may look like the modern world, but I swear some things never change.

Even though I wasn’t alive during the fight for women’s suffrage or the housewife era, it doesn’t take much to understand that women were only seen as intelligent enough to bake a cake. You would think that as the years passed and women started throwing out their man-made identities, society would have to get on board. From the outside, it may seem like that actually took place, but for women exerting their authority, that could not be more incorrect.

My first recollection of being exposed to the idea of women being viewed as bossy or abrasive in the workplace was in a movie theater of all places. It was 2006 and I was a naïve 9-year-old thinking that I would be seen as an equal as I worked my way through life, both socially and professionally. “The Devil Wears Prada” kicked that naiveté right out of me.

For those of you who don’t know the plot of the film, here it is: a wannabe journalist, Andrea Sachs — Anne — possesses no fashion sense whatsoever, but goes to work for fashion magazine workaholic Miranda Priestly — Meryl Streep — and Andrea learns a thing or two about working for a woman in charge.

There is a particular quote toward the end of the movie that exemplifies exactly what is wrong with the workforce today and it reads, “Okay, she’s tough, but if Miranda were a man, no one would notice anything about her, except how good she is at her job.”  

An article published in Fortune Magazine in August 2014, entitled “The Abrasiveness Trap” discusses how men and women who have advanced in the workplace are evaluated in significantly different ways. 180 people from various company sizes submitted 248 reviews and the negative feedback to men as compared to women is staggering. When breaking down the amount of critical/negative feedback by gender, only 58.9 percent of the reviews on men had negative things to say, while the reviews on women were 87.9 percent critical or negative.

If you look at any woman in power, you will find people who think her power and drive are over the line, but why? Because the one in charge is a woman. We see men walking around all the time, tossing out orders like employees are servants, but do we say anything to him about it? That would be a no.

For example, I have been watching Donald Trump on his NBC show “The Celebrity Apprentice” for years and the amount of arrogance that man has is astonishing. He throws his money around and barks at his own children, all while promoting himself. Yet people still seemed to be impressed by all his success and power. If he were a woman, I can guarantee you that that show would not have made it seven seasons. The female version of Trump would have been viewed as a frivolous airhead, never acknowledged as someone who beat the odds and made it as a woman in business.

For society as a whole, there really has not been much of a shift in understanding that women can handle more than maintaining a home. Within the female gender as a group, however, that is a different story. The variance between now and the time of suffrage is that we, as women, know that we can handle business and success. We just have to convince everyone else of that as well. There is one individual in particular that has been trying to do that in the political world for years — Hillary Clinton.

Although my political ideology doesn’t quite align with hers, I have always been fond of her for breaking the mold of who can do what in politics. Back in the day, if a woman had political aspirations, the farthest up she could go was being a secretary to someone in office.

That standard, and the still-standing judgment against powerful women should have died long ago.