Funny how, sometimes, the public doesn’t see a milestone until it’s almost in our rear-view mirror.

Frances Perkins was appointed Labor Secretary by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, making her the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet. She was one of only two cabinet secretaries to serve in each of Roosevelt’s four terms in office.

In 1968, Shirley Chisolm of New York became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. Four years later, she sought the Democratic nomination for president.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court and, two years later, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.

Those things – all firsts in their own way – created a buzz when they happened. But such achievements are often also accompanied by a “what’s next” kind of feeling that helps propel our society forward.

That has certainly been true in New Hampshire. Jeanne Shaheen didn’t stop with being New Hampshire’s first elected woman governor; she now sits in the U.S. Senate and serves alongside Kelly Ayotte, the first woman in the state to be appointed attorney general. They are part of an all-women congressional delegation in a state led by a governor and a speaker of the House who are also women.

Our society favors the idea that we long ago broke through the glass ceiling and that women can hold and do any job that men can hold.

That premise became a little more true last week, when a male-dominated bastion gave way to a woman’s leadership for the first time.

General Motors announced that Mary T. Barra has been chosen the company’s chief executive officer, making her the first woman named to lead one of the country’s Big Three automakers.

Barra worked her way to the top, starting as an 18-year-old company intern in an era when women on the assembly line and in the boardroom were not exactly common in the auto industry. She has since worked in a variety of leadership positions within the company and last week reached the pinnacle.

Barra’s promotion is a significant step forward for women and represents, in some measure, a further leveling of the playing field for men and women.

While there remain few job thresholds yet to be crossed for women in the workplace, the issue of pay equality remains a vexing one.

As we noted in June, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that women only earned about 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2012 – and that was less than the year before.

That income disparity was even greater in the Granite State, where women, on average, earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Corporate documents show that Barra was paid $4.9 million in total compensation last year, including $750,000 in salary, when she was serving in an executive vice president’s role at GM.

We don’t know what her pay will be going forward, but it will likely be tied to the company’s performance as she leads GM down a post-bankruptcy road.

Her hiring will make an even greater statement about workplace equality if GM is competitive with Ford and Chrysler in the marketplace and Barra’s pay equals or surpasses those of the men leading those other companies.

That bears watching, even as we ask “what’s next?” and look to 2016 and consider one of the country’s last leadership positions yet to be filled by a woman.

Newsletter