Millennial men—those born roughly between the early 1980s and the late 1990s—are often said to be far more egalitarian with respect to gender than their older counterparts. For example, Boston Consulting Group reported in 2017 that “men younger than 40 are far more attuned than older men to the obstacles women face in the workplace,” and “are more willing to change their behavior to make the interventions [needed to reduce those obstacles] succeed.”

Likewise, in a paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families, a team of sociologists found that today’s high school seniors are far more likely than they were 40 years ago to believe women should be considered as seriously as men for jobs as executives. In 1976, just 76 percent of high school seniors agreed that a woman should have exactly the same job opportunities as a man, but by 1994 that percentage had increased to 89 percent, where it remains today. A related study found that the same pattern held true for young people aged 18 to 25. And, researchers have asserted that every generation over the past 40 years has become more egalitarian with respect to their attitudes toward women’s and men’s roles in the workplace, with millennials “the most egalitarian generation yet.”

What Millennial Men Really Think About Women in Leadership Roles

But if each successive generation is becoming more egalitarian, why have women made so little progress since the mid-1990s in attaining senior leadership positions in business and the professions? There are many answers to that question, but the most important one is that discriminatory gender stereotypes and biases are just as pervasive and influential — if not more so — among millennial men as they were among the men of earlier generations. Thus, in a 2014 Harris Poll of 2,000 U.S. adults commissioned by Pershing LLC, researchers found that young men are less comfortable than older men with women holding positions of power in traditional male fields. For example, less than half of men aged 18 to 34 said they were comfortable with women as U.S. senators (43 percent), Fortune 500 executives (39 percent), President of the United States (35 percent), or as engineers (34 percent). More than 50 percent of men over 34 years of age were comfortable with women in these roles. It appears, therefore, that regardless of what millennial men say about their support of gender equality in the workplace, when they answer concrete questions about women actually holding positions of public prominence and power, they are uncomfortable.

We should not be surprised by this apparent contradiction. It is one thing to be asked a general question about gender equality in the workplace — “should women have exactly the same job opportunities as men?” — and quite another to be asked a specific question about women holding senior leadership positions — “Would you be comfortable if the senior executives in your company were women?” This is similar to the apparently contradictory answers researchers are likely to get from many white people to the questions: “Are you a racist?” and “Would you be comfortable moving into a neighborhood populated by people of a different race or ethnicity than your own?” Or the apparent contradiction between the overwhelmingly positive response that the Council on Contemporary Families got to the question, “Should women be considered as seriously as men for jobs as politicians” and white men’s overwhelming support for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Few people think they are racists or sexists; indeed, most people believe they are unbiased and egalitarian. But when forced to confront specific situations and express their actual preferences, people’s implicit biases typically come out. This is clear from the results thousands of people have received when they have taken the gender and racial portions of the Implicit Attitude Test at Harvard’s Project Implicit over the past 30 years.

How To Make Progress Toward Gender Equality in the Workplace

The Pershing study, millennials’ behavior as managers, the lack of progress toward gender diversity in senior leadership, and our personal experience all lead us to seriously doubt that millennial men are any more open to and supportive of women’s career advancement than previous generations. So where does that leave us? As we have argued for a long time, expecting the pervasive biases against women to fade away as younger generations take control of our major organizations is foolish at best and counterproductive at worst. This country is not going to age its way out of gender bias. Concerted and purposeful action is needed to block the discriminatory consequences of gender bias. With through-going, tough-minded changes to organizational policies and procedures, organizations can effectively counter gender bias — and assure that women are seriously considered for jobs in senior leadership.