Anyone who spent time around scientists in the mid 20th century can testify that a macho attitude prevailed among them. Scientists built huge, powerful machines, even bombs; they eradicated diseases, deciphered DNA, and landed on the moon. Women just didn’t fit into this vision; even when they made crucial advances, men ran the show and took the credit. In this way, science was no more enlightened than many other fields.

But there’s good news: It’s taken a while to get there, but according to a newly published study, women scientists are now at or very close to parity in hiring, promotion, and pay, and even outdistance men in some areas:

The paper published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest looked at two decades of research regarding biases that tenure-track women have faced since 2000. In the end, the authors determined tenure-track women in science, technology, engineering or math were at parity with men in tenure-track positions in the same fields when it comes to grant funding, journal acceptances and recommendation letters.

Women did have an advantage in the hiring process for the tenure-track jobs, though the evidence did show a bias against women in teaching evaluations and salaries. The salary gap, according to the report, was concerning but smaller than the oft-quoted statistic that women in STEM fields make 82 cents for every dollar that men earn. On average, the gap was 9 cents on the dollar, although the gap shrank to less than 4 cents when controlling for experience, type of institution and productivity, among other factors.

So much progress has been made that complaints about anti-women discrimination may soon disappear. And what’s next? Yes, that’s right . . .