Yes, Women Are Ambitious. Why Is That Such a Surprise?

Last October, when Lean In and McKinsey published their annual Women in the Workplace report—an agenda-setting state of the nation-style tome—there was one takeaway that topped much of the news coverage: Women are ambitious after all! 

Contrary to recent headlines, the report proclaimed (while citing reams of data, and to the astonishment of absolutely no women anywhere), women are just as committed to their careers and just as interested in being promoted as their male counterparts. This is true “at every stage of the pipeline,” the report noted. 

The fact that a formal report has legitimized this idea is, of course, good news. But here’s something that would have been even better: If employers had acknowledged this decades ago.

The Logic Doesn’t Add Up

In the prologue to my book, “Women Money Power,” I write about an off-the-record interview I did with the CEO of a major multinational company that employs tens of thousands of people. (You can read an excerpt from my book here.)

I asked the CEO about the gender pay gap at his organization, why it had barely budged in recent years, and what needed to be done to fix it. His response floored me: When women have children, he posited confidently, their priorities shift and they might no longer be as eager for that promotion or pay raise as their male colleagues. In short, he said, women simply become less ambitious after having babies. I was so shocked, I could barely formulate a coherent follow-up.

In short, he said, women simply become less ambitious after having babies. I was so shocked, I could barely formulate a coherent follow-up.

Of course, in some cases, his assertions hold up. Some women do make the choice not to work outside of the home. Some women do decide that the burden of child-raising is incompatible with the career trajectory they’d previously been aiming to track. No doubt, some women are less ambitious in the paid labor market after having a child.

But why is that? In many instances, it’s because the parameters of the traditional workplace force women to make a choice. It’s because the math of continuing to scale the career ladder while shelling out for a dawn-to-dusk childcare, doesn’t make sense. It’s because unchallenged assumptions too often postulate that a working mom simply doesn’t want to be a primary breadwinner. 

But for a CEO who’s on the hook to explain the gender pay gap in his organization, maybe it’s just easier to simply blame women.

The Cultural Fit Trap

Ambition is a prime candidate for “looking glass merit,” a theory developed  by Lauren Rivera, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. 

The theory goes like this...

As humans, we have a tendency to trust people who resemble us and to define merit in a way that’s self-validating. If, for example, a manager is instructed to hire someone who will be a good fit for the team, that manager is likely to use themself for reference: They’ll look for candidates who look like them, sound like them, or seem to come from a similar background as them. And they won’t—to be clear—necessarily be aware of their bias-infused line of reasoning. 

The result? Homogenous leadership teams dominated by the types of people who have historically enjoyed disproportionate power and influence: white men. (This year’s recently published Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. companies by revenue shows the effect in action. Of all of the companies that made the cut, a mere 10.4 percent are run by women.)

Looking glass merit is why terms like “ambition,” “gravitas,” and “drive,” as well as phrases like “cultural fit”—and the job ads that contain them—are pernicious conduits for discrimination. 

When the CEO I spoke with used the word “ambition,” I couldn’t help but think of Rivera’s work and the self-validating nature of the decisions made by people in positions of power. Perhaps the CEO only recognized ambition, in as far as it mirrored the ambition he saw in himself. 

There’s also a question of how we define ambition. Ambition is, after all, often conflated with face time: putting in long hours at the office or being the last to head for home after a late-night client dinner. This is particularly true in jobs that Claudia Goldin—the Harvard economist who last year won the Nobel Prize—describes as “greedy” because they suck up an inordinate amount of time. Greedy work is hard to balance with any kind of competing obligation or duty, especially something like childcare. As such, people who do greedy jobs are well compensated. But no, these particular people are not more ambitious. They just happen to be in a position in which they’re able to give their undivided attention to paid labor. 

Tougher Negotiators 

When evaluating ambition—who has it, who doesn’t—a useful first step might be to establish how it’s measured. Might a sensible yardstick be how willing someone is to negotiate a salary? How likely they are to push for more pay? If it is, then there’s conclusive evidence that beliefs about women being less ambitious than men are patently false.

Last March, academics at the University of California and Vanderbilt University published a paper entitled Now, Women Do Ask: A Call to Update Beliefs about the Gender Pay Gap. “For over two decades, gender differences in the propensity to negotiate have been thought to explain the gender pay gap,” the authors write. 

But, “contrary to lay beliefs, women report negotiating their salaries more (not less) often than men,” they conclude. Yes, more. 

The academics surveyed thousands of current and former business school students and found that 54 percent of women graduating from an M.B.A. program negotiated their job offer. That’s 10 percentage points higher than the proportion of their male classmates.

On the topic of motherhood and ambition specifically, Boston Consulting Group analyzed survey data from 200,000 employees and found that: “Women’s ambition levels do vary, but they vary by company, not by family status. When companies create a positive culture and attitude regarding gender diversity, all women—mothers included—are eager to advance.”

“Ambition is not a fixed attribute, but is nurtured—or damaged—by the daily interactions, conversations, and opportunities that women face over time.”

BCG’s report concluded that “the problem is neither inherent nor related to motherhood; instead, it hinges on the day-to-day experiences of women at work. Ambition is not a fixed attribute, but is nurtured—or damaged—by the daily interactions, conversations, and opportunities that women face over time.”

In other words, employers fall back on the tired old trope that “women lack ambition” in an attempt to paper over what’s really wrong. Namely, that women are being paid less, judged more harshly, and discriminated against because of broader systemic issues.

In the three and a half years since I interviewed that CEO, I’ve told that story many times to mothers, to fathers and to individuals who don’t have children. The vast majority have responded with a bark of laughter or an eye-roll. But practically every parent—especially in the U.S.—has shot back with an incredulous, “New moms, less ambitious?! Really? Not more?!” 

I agree with their surprise. Because what is ambition, if it’s not being willing to navigate the challenge of raising a child in a world in which paid parental leave is far from a guarantee? In which the forces of capitalism make it almost impossible to sustain a balance of paid and unpaid labor?

Rather than dwell on the myth of the ambition gap, business leaders should do the messier work: Fix childcare, combat bias, create role models that don’t foment stereotypes. And for the good of everyone, let’s boycott the idea of ambition—whatever “ambition” even means.

Josie Cox is a journalist, author, broadcaster and public speaker. Her book, “WOMEN MONEY POWER: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality,” was released in March.

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