By many measures, women have leapt ahead of their male peers in higher education. Today they have higher college enrollment and graduate at higher rates, and on many campuses, women’s and gender studies programs have mushroomed on campuses nationwide. But women’s educational advancement hasn’t come cheap.

The hidden cost of academic gender parity, according to a new analysis by the American Association of University Women, is a disproportionate student debt burden; women are borrowing more to “get ahead” on the career ladder, only to find their futures constrained by the shackles of debt.

Women carry roughly two thirds of the country’s $1.3tn student debt load – altogether that’s about $833bn for women, compared to $477bn for men. The reasons for higher debt are varied, but the trends of financial hardship reveal how the new sexism problem on campus might not be so much outright discrimination but a slow-burning crisis of eroding economic opportunity once they enter the workforce.

Graduating with a cloud of debt hanging over your head not only means you start your life in a financial hole, it also makes it increasingly difficult over time to achieve economic stability, buy a home, start a family or save for retirement. Debt limits people’s choices of where to live, even when to get married. And for women especially, the illusion of finally getting on a “level playing field” with men ends up masking hidden hardships that disproportionately hold women back.

On paper, the gap may seem fairly small; the average cumulative debt owed by women with bachelor’s degrees was about $20,900 in 2012 versus nearly $19,500 for men. But across all degree levels, the year-to-year financial burden is crushing: women face an estimated 14% higher debt burden in a given year than comparably educated men. So within about four years of graduating, women generally lag farther behind men on their college debt repayments.

About a third of women with student debt reported they had trouble covering their basic living expenses over the past year due to their student loan burden. When race is factored in, women of color fare even worse, with about four in ten Latinas and six in ten black women saying they’ve struggled to cover the essentials and juggle monthly debt payments.

Women’s debt inequity is compounded by the gender pay gap; college-educated women working full-time earn 26% less than their male peers – and the gap widens over time.

The reasons for the income inequality vary, from job discrimination, to interrupting work due to childbirth. Whatever the cause, as the researchers explain: “When you combine higher debt with lower incomes after graduation, you get a recipe for financial hardship.”

Even with a degree, the debt burden can make it impossibly hard to navigate other challenges, from pursuing further graduate education, start saving for a future home or your own business, or leave an abusive relationship.

Women also face higher risk of defaulting on student loans, which could tip young families from a short-term setback into lifetime of crisis. On top of lower earnings, women also accumulate less wealth than men in financial assets, including home equity. The wealth gap is even more glaring for black and Latina women, many of whom actually end up with negative net worth later in life.

Overall, for men and women, young college-educated households with unpaid loans also tend to take on additional debt in credit card borrowing and car loans. Not surprisingly, surveys have shown that young people carrying student debt are more prone to depression, anxiety, and all the attendant risk of social and economic instability.

These financial barriers limit opportunities for all college students, but are especially corrosive for a generation of young women who’ve grown up under the illusion of unlimited academic potential. For them, the risks versus the rewards of paying for college call into question the very value of their diploma.

Overall, there is, on balance, a real economic premium that a college degree provides, as most professional track jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree. But in an age of Lean-in feminism, the interlocking barriers of race, gender and debt weave a tight but invisible sieve around a generation of women increasingly expected to “have it all.”

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has proposed making college even more expensive by slashing student aid and rolling back loan forgiveness programs – policies that will drive up the student debt burden for all students, and could potentially widen the gender debt gap further in the coming years. There’s a growing clamor among millennial to make all higher education tuition-free.

Short of making college access free for all aspiring students, in the immediate term, straightforward measures can fix institutional gaps and make college more affordable for women; providing childcare facilities and other forms of financial support while they’re on campus, for example, can at least ensure they graduate on time.

Over the past century, the academy’s doors have been pried open on many levels for women; professors no longer lecture about the “natural” intellectual inferiority of the female intellect.

But the door is still half closed to real gender equity. Both men and women deserve greater educational access as a human right. But the gender gap will continue to widen as long as women must pay more just to afford a long overdue equal opportunity.