describe themselves as very or extremely
ambitious), the whys and the wherefores
are complicated.
This subject of women’s ambition has
long been textured and fraught. Anne-
Marie Slaughter’s controversial 2013 ar-
ticle in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still
Can’t Have It All,” explained her decision
to leave a dream job as director of policy
planning under Secretary of State Hill-
ary Clinton to spend more time with her
sons. Shortly thereafter Sheryl Sandberg’s
blockbuster book Lean In was a validating
reality check for countless women strug-
gling to balance work and family. Lean In
inspired others with Sandberg’s personal
story, plus her exhortation that women
must claim a place at the table in order
to succeed. Both Sandberg and Slaughter
reignited the simmering debate over why
women, despite outperforming men aca-
demically for a generation, still were not
making it to the top.
Now “lean in” is cultural shorthand,
as Slaughter discussed in her own subse-
quent book, Unfinished Business. Whereas
Sandberg’s book was a call to individual ac-
tion—you know you’ve got that ambition,
girls; now own it—Slaughter’s is a thought-
ful memo to a culture that makes it diffi-
cult for working women to ever feel they’re
getting it right. “Sandberg focuses on how
young women can climb into the C-suite in
a traditional male world of corporate hier-
archies,” Slaughter writes. “I see that sys-
tem itself as antiquated and broken.” Her
viewpoint is less optimistic, in a way, but
it acknowledges a holistic view of ambi-
tion and success. (She quotes a Princeton
undergraduate woman telling a friend, “I
don’t even know if I want a career. I want to
get married, stay home and raise my kids.
What’s wrong with me?”)
Companies fail to see that for women,
ambition is about much more than the job.
If a laser focus on career at the expense of
a rewarding personal life is what it takes
for a seat in the corner office—well, many
women would rather not sit there. We
spoke to a number of professional women
who realized ambition meant something
different than they had originally thought.I was president of a publicly
traded company.
I was making more money than I’d ever
imagined. Being written about in Fortune,
and all these things that you would think
would make someone feel really good. Yet I
was really unhappy! I was talking to a girl-
friend of mine, and she said, “Do you ever
think about quitting?”
And I said, “Quitting?!” I’ve never quit at
anything in my life. It just seemed absurd.
And she said, “Well, you’re not happy, so
what is it that you’re afraid of?”
That stopped me cold. I’d never really
thought about it, but I was afraid of what
people would think. That was when I
thought, Wow, my definition of success is
pretty messed up, and I need to get my pri-
orities in check.
Lorna Borenstein
Founder, Grokker.comAlthough young women are more ambi-
tious than young men in the traditional
sense (girls are graduating with bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in greater numbers
than boys are, and those numbers have
been climbing over the past half- century),
how we view ambition in women is tricky.
“When you say ‘ambitious woman,’ there’s
a judgy tinge to it that doesn’t happen for
men—if all you hear about a woman is that
she’s ambitious, you probably wouldn’t
want to hang out with her,” says Stepha-
nie Clifford, a New York Times reporter
and the author of the novel Everybody Rise.
“Naked ambition in a woman is problem-
atic in the business world,” adds Betsy
Stark, managing director of content and
media strategy of Ogilvy Public Relations
and a former business correspondent for
ABC News. “We continue to walk a fine
line. We have to demonstrate enough am-
bition to be taken seriously as ‘success ma-
terial’ but not so much that we’re perceived
as a freight train. Relentless ambition in a
man is more likely to be respected as what
it takes to get to the top.”
The statistics on women making it toof women
characterize
themselves
as very or
extremely
ambitiousof men
characterize
themselves
that waysay personal
priorities or
family
obligationsThe main
obstacles
keeping
women from
being more
ambitious at
work are ...say lack of
confidence