While it's important to see more diverse representation of the workforce in prominent places, especially in fields where women have made significant inroads, overstating how diverse or equal our workplaces currently are has detrimental effects. In our enthusiasm to show diverse people doing diverse work, we might unintentionally sell short the extent to which our workplaces remain deeply unequal.

Despite the fact that women have higher college graduation rates than men (this is true in the U.S. as a whole but heightened in Puerto Rico), Puerto Rico still faces major gender inequality issues, including high incidences of violence against women (which normally increase after natural disasters and times of economic stress), a high number of female heads of households, and low representation of women in politics and government. Most experts attribute these disparities to overall poverty in Puerto Rico and to the way the U.S. has structured Puerto Rico’s economy, which has been hard on families and left women to bear the brunt.