Looking at these memes, it's clear that our society hasn't achieved gender equality quite yet. But that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende, whose novels are often based upon her personal experience and historical events and pay homage to the lives of women, thinks that we're certainly progressing.

"I have lived enough to see great changes in the situation of women," Allende told The New York Times in an interview. "Little by little, women are chipping away the patriarchy. The fact we have not been able to replace it yet doesn't mean we have failed; it means that the job is monumental. But it's not impossible."

"I believe it will happen, but not in my lifetime, and it will happen only if women are educated, informed, connected and active. It takes very little for us to lose the rights we have obtained. Best recent example: the Taliban. In a few days, women and girls lost all their rights in Afghanistan, and the most awful form of patriarchy took over the country. We have to be vigilant: Given the wrong circumstances, it can happen anywhere."

We can even verify this quantitatively. Since 2006, the Global Gender Gap Index has been measuring the extent of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Tracking the progress towards closing these gaps over time, it reports benchmarks and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across and within regional peers. According to its 2020 findings, there is still a 31.4% average gender gap that remains to be closed globally.

Across the four characteristics, on average, the largest gender disparity lies within political empowerment. Despite being the most improved dimension that year, the gap on this subindex has only been closed by 25%, meaning there are still not enough women occupying seats in government across the world.

However, it's important to note that the political empowerment subindex fails to measure the legal rights of women and girls in comparison to those of men, which plays a significant role in determining the extent to which a society is equal.

"Although progress [has been] made in advancing women’s rights, it has been slow and inconsistent, and many sex-discriminatory laws remain entrenched,” Romina Canessa, a human rights lawyer at Equality Now, told Global Citizen. “When governments deny women and girls the same rights as men and boys, this legitimizes discrimination and abuse, and means they have no formal recourse if their rights are violated.”