“We’ve finally reached a tipping point to stand up, to refuse ... to be treated as anything less than equal,” says Lauren Leader-Chivée, an activist and thought leader on diversity and women’s issues in the workplace. “That’s a major change. Women have been galvanized.”

Leader-Chivée is one of the people I was fortunate enough to interview for Big Ideas for 2018, a series on the new year. I asked a number of my favorite award-winning marketing experts, authors and other thought leaders to recommend one big idea that companies can take advantage of to get ahead in 2018.

Leader-Chivée’s new book, “Crossing the Thinnest Line,” argues that gender diversity is the single most undervalued and under-leveraged economic asset in the U.S. today. Women are 57 percent of today’s college graduates, and 4 million copies of “Lean In” have been sold — she cites these as just two indicators of the major changes in how women are perceived in American society.

“The movement has been building for a long time; now, it’s time to see how powerfully women will speak up on their own behalf in politics, entertainment, etc.,” Leader-Chivée says. “With any luck, it’s a movement that is here to stay.”

What changed in 2017 that made women especially determined to be treated more fairly in 2018? According to Leader-Chivée, there hasn’t been one specific tipping point. “It hasn’t been one particular thing, and that’s what is most interesting about it. A lot of people say it’s a combination of the election and the #MeToo movement, but it’s been growing for years.”

Recalling her 2017 trips to the Women’s Farmer Union in North Dakota and the She Summit in New York, “what you see with women across the political and economic spectrum is a growing sense of frustration, facing barriers that they were previously told had been struck down,” she said.

Leader-Chivée notes that it’s been a quarter-century since Anita Hill testified against Clarence Thomas, and yet inappropriate conduct in the workplace is still a real concern for many women.

The shift heading into 2018, then, is that so much of the past’s sexual misconduct has been brought out into the open.

“What’s powerful about #MeToo is that so many women have been intentionally silenced,” Leader-Chivée says. Many women have been muzzled through settlement agreements, with many unaware that they were not alone because of these enforced silences.

Thanks to Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit against Fox News, that is finally beginning to change.

But how does an organization let potential new hires, as well as the market, know that they’re one of the “good guys”?

Leader-Chivée believes that organizations that want to do more than just talk the talk have a few ways they can get ahead.

“There are some really simple and fundamental things that every organization needs to do,” she says. “First and foremost, every organization needs an outside ombudsman to look at claims and not rely on human resources to be the ones investigating.”

In reality, employees don’t always see the HR department as an ally because of a perception that they only are there to protect their employers and the companies’ reputations. Leader-Chivée also recommends that companies be willing to go public with valid claims, so the perpetrators are ousted.

“Fundamentally, we need to have zero tolerance for people who demonstrate unacceptable behavior,” she says. “The price of silence has to be greater than the price of transparency.”

Much as the Civil Rights era in the U.S. succeeded in part because individuals who didn’t have something clear to gain stepped up publicly as allies, Leader-Chivée sees a similar parallel with women in the workplace, noting that “it takes a lot of men stepping up” to help effect long-lasting change.

“Allies are huge and, of course, we need men. None of this changes if men don’t change their behavior. Ultimately men are the deciders,” she says. “The extent that the paradigm shifts is that men take responsibility for the shift. Until men take a leading role tackling the bias, we’re going to continue to face it.”

While some organizations are championing women in the right way and some sectors are taking the current moment more seriously than others, Leader-Chivée isn’t comfortable with society resting on its laurels. “Are there some pockets of hope? Absolutely. But we have a long way to go,” she says.

Encouraging more board diversity is just one place to start.

These are deep-seated systemic issues that take a long time to resolve. But with authors and activists like Leader-Chivée at the helm, progress just might move forward quicker.