Hillary Clinton made history last night when she accepted the nomination for president, the first woman from a major party to ever do so. It was a victory for women everywhere to be sure, but for a certain type of us, it felt particularly sweet: The bookworms, the nerds, the strivers. Those of us who sat in the front row, raised our hands too much, offered the right answers too readily. We were never very cool (we were lucky if we were even marginally socially adept). We did a lot of work for which someone else often got credit. And last night, one of us finally took her rightful place at the top.

It is still a difficult thing to be a smart girl. By many measures, girls and women are doing better than ever: Women outnumber men on college campuses and in many graduate schools; they are more than 70 percent of high school valedictorians. In much of America, part of being a "good girl" is being an exceptional girl: Succeeding academically, playing sports, engaging in extracurricular activities, volunteering, getting into a good college, being pretty, and making it all look easy – "effortless perfection," researchers at Duke University put it.

But for as much as girls are achieving, and for all their intelligence and their academic successes, there is a power gap and a likeability gap. Young women's dominance at institutions of higher education isn't reflected in the positions of authority they hold at those same institutions: Among the top 100 colleges and universities ranked by U.S. News & World Report, just a third have female student body presidents. And while young men say they want to date smart women, one study found that when they're actually face-to-face with a woman who has outperformed them on a test, they find her less attractive and less desirable to date than a woman who scored worse than they did. In another study, male speed daters liked smart and ambitious women, but not when the women seemed smarter or more ambitious than the men themselves.

That impossible balance – be smart, but not too smart; be ambitious, but not so ambitious that you threaten the guys – starts girls out at a disadvantage in their academic lives and continues to set them back as they go through college, enter the workforce, and move up the professional ladder. Student body presidents at elite schools gain leadership practice and often find themselves running for higher office once they're out of school – young people who run for student government positions are 11 percent more likely to see elected office after college. As adults, women remain less likely to run for office than men, often because they simply don't think they're as qualified or because no one has ever encouraged them to.

For older and younger women alike, stereotypes about gender and power elevate men and keep women out of leadership positions. For example, regardless of their actual characteristics, strengths, and actions, female leaders are perceived to be better at caretaking and support roles, while male leaders are seen as being better at "taking charge." Men are simply understood to be leaders by default, while women have to prove their competence – and the threshold for female competence is higher than that for men. When women are seen as capable and adept, they're also disliked, while women who are liked are often perceived as not particularly bright or good at their jobs. Female leaders are often "too" something – too soft, too aggressive, too nice, too tough.

Hillary Clinton has certainly lived the impact of these stereotypes about women and power. Her likability, or lack thereof, is a regular topic of discussion and concern. She was too liberal before she was too conservative; she's too loud when she speaks, but she's also too boring; she was too moralistic, and now she's too cynical. As long as she's running for office, it seems there's no "just right" for voters' perceptions of Clinton. And once she actually holds office, she's low-key, a collaborator and supporter of others, rarely quick to claim credit – which is perhaps why, despite being a hugely effective senator and a Secretary of State who handled important work quietly, she doesn't often get the same recognition as her male peers. "I'm the girl who did the whole lab project and organized the whole group presentation," wrote Alexandra Petri in a Washington Post piece humorously describing what Real Talk speech from Hillary would sound like. "And then let Chad give the speech."

It's a position lots of ambitious, striving, slightly nerdy girls can relate to.

In her speech last night, Clinton described her work as a young woman going door to door with the Children's Defense Fund, meeting kids in need. After meeting a girl who couldn't go to school because of her disability, Clinton collaborated with a coalition of activists to pass a law ensuring education access for all children with disabilities. "How do you make an ideal like that real?" she asked. "You do it step-by-step, year-by-year, sometimes even door-by-door." That has been so much of her career: Slow and steady, doing the grunt work, getting things done even when she didn't get the credit, being disliked when her work was recognized, watching her male peers pull ahead. It's the story of so many determined, brainy women. Even while many of us now thrive, it's easy to look back and see all the ways we were kneecapped for the same characteristics that enabled our success.

Clinton's speech last night was a moving, history-making moment. She wasn't the prom queen. She wasn't cool. She still isn't exactly widely adored. But as I watched her, I thought of my elementary-school self, a kid with her nose always in a book who read out loud a little too enthusiastically; a girl who grew into a young adult who was a little too loud, a little too much of a go-getter, who worked hard and had friends but would never be described as "likable" or "cool." And there was Hillary on stage: A go-getter, a hard worker, not immediately likable, uncool, but still, just maybe, the future president. A girl-nerd turned lady boss. One of us.

Follow Jill on Twitter.

Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io