Twenty years ago, in the Supreme Court opinion of United States v. Virginia, Justice Ginsburg highlighted the importance of recognizing difference between men and women when making laws to combat gender inequality.

Instead of pushing for equality by claiming that women should have the same treatment as men, Ginsburg aptly recognizes that in order for women to be treated equally to men, there are circumstances where we must be treated differently.

Unfortunately, this approach to gender equality is not what my peers and I are exposed to on a daily basis. It turns out that Supreme Court opinions from brilliant female minds like Ginsburg are not frequented on today’s best-seller lists.

Instead, my female peers and I see article after article on Sheryl Sandberg and watch GIFs of Beyoncé dancing that say “you have the same hours in a day as she does.”

As a result, when I talk to my female friends about how to navigate adulthood and a career as a woman, there is no mention of Ginsburg’s argument of different treatment for women and men. There is no discussion of changing the way companies are run, or the way child-care is handled. My peers have accepted that in order to be as successful as our male counterparts, we will have to do all they do and more. If we cannot, we have to be comfortable forsaking our careers.

As a result of the increasing pressure for our generation of women to break through the glass ceiling, many of my female peers in college and now law school have developed a “lean in” mentality without recognizing the very unfair burden this kind of approach will inevitably place on them. The reality is that the most severe disadvantages for women begin after school is over.

For many of my peers, it will not be until they are faced with the difficulties of raising children while managing a demanding career that the obvious differences between the sexes will become overbearing. At that point, many women will decide (understandably so) that family is more important than work, and they will drop out of the race to the top, thereby perpetuating the statistics we see today that, despite female domination in higher education, men continue to rule the world.

Society’s failure to recognize the very real differences between men and women when discussing feminism today is particularly problematic for girls and young women who have yet to join the workforce. Academic institutions, unlike corporate America, foster female empowerment and success.

For many of my friends in college and now law school, the weight of the gender binary will not truly be felt until their first job. In the meantime, on a day-to-day basis, my peers and I read about women who can “do it all” a-la Sheryl Sandberg and Beyoncé. Where are the articles about new tech companies that are redefining how maternity leave should be approached? Or how X female partner at Y law firm bills half her hours from home?

Encouraging women to “lean in,” “power through,” or prove that we can “do it all” is not the answer. Yes, this mentality may enable some women, typically privileged white women, to reach high-level corporate positions.

However, the small percentage of women who are able to do this are not challenging the gender binary. They are adhering to a male-dominated patriarchy. They are continuing to play within the rules created and perpetuated by men, and it just so happens they are able, for a host of reasons, to keep up.

It is clear, though, that these women are the exception. More commonly, this kind of approach leaves women depleted, discouraged, and eventually burned out until they give up.

I have many impressive, competitive, and brilliant female peers in law school. When we graduate this spring, the majority of them are beginning their careers at top law firms across the country. Half of them will join litigation practice groups, while the other half will be corporate. It is rare for us to discuss realities like what we will do once we have three children and are trying to deal with billable hours. To broach such a topic, a perfectly acceptable and real consideration, brings with it an element of weakness that a competitive law student has been groomed to avoid. When, or if, we do address it, there is never any talk of how we could change the system. There is only conceding that, should we be unable to continue on said path once the realities of being a female are no longer ignorable, we have other interests that are better anyways.

If we are the generation obsessed with start-ups, being entrepreneurs, and creating our own paths, why is it that we have yet to even attempt to redefine the system when it comes to gender equality? Why is it that my female peers (myself included), all either college graduates working in cities or attending top business, medical, or law schools across the country, aren’t engaged in finding ways to create change, but rather are focused on how they can work harder in order to survive within the system we already have?

It is not anti-feminist to be honest about the desire to have a family and/or children. It is not anti-feminist to be strategic about career planning, given the constraints placed on women in the workforce. The mentality that all my generation needs to do is more in order to succeed within the constraints of patriarchy is going to hurt us.

Regardless of how brilliant, brave, and resilient we may be, women cannot be expected to achieve what men do when given less opportunity. Until women are provided with different treatment in the workforce, treatment that addresses the realities of being a woman, we will have less opportunity than men, regardless of upbringing, background, or success prior to working.

The fact that our generation is invited, even encouraged, to enter into the male-dominated arena does not mean the rules of the game have become fair. The few women who are able to thrive and maintain long-term careers, while impressive, are not examples of how our society has reached equality. The success of these women is not attributable to changes in our system, but to their own super-human qualities. Women and men are different. In order for women to ever reach an equal playing field with men, recognizing this reality is crucial.