the top remain grim. Although there were
12 women running Fortune 500 companies
in 2011 and now there are 23, that still rep-
resents only 4.6% of all 500 CEOs. Bon-
nie Gwin doesn’t believe ambition is the
problem. Vice chair at executive recruiting
firm Heidrick & Struggles, Gwin focuses
on searches at the director and CEO level.
In her experience, women are just as am-
bitious as men. But while women “want
to be successful in whatever domain they
choose,” she says, they’re “less direct about
their ambition. It’s not something women
put out there all the time.” In fact, our poll
revealed that more than a third of women
feel they have too little ambition; half say
it’s not acceptable not to be ambitious.
A woman’s attitude toward ambition,
Gwin believes, is “a little more personal
and contextual. I know a lot of women who
are very driven and want to follow a corpo-
rate path and are aiming for top jobs, and
I know others where it’s not the path they
want.” Out of desire or need, women define
success in terms of professional and per-
sonal accomplishment. Slaughter writes
that “thinking of careers as a single race
in which everyone starts at the same point
and competes over the same period... tilts
the scales in favor of the workers who can
compete that way.” And many women have
found that they can’t. Or won’t.
I was raised to believe there was
nothing my brother did that I could
not also do if I worked hard enough.
And so I went to Princeton, graduated in
2003 and headed to arguably the best firm
on Wall Street.
But then, in the span of five years from
2004 to 2009, I lost my father, mother and
sister. In the case of both my parents, I re-
ceived the call of their passing while at the
office. The moment I absolutely knew that
life at an investment bank was not for me
was when my mother passed away in Ni-
geria while I was in New York. There were
a couple of days between when I found out
and when I flew out for the funeral. During
that period I received a call asking if I would
be able to come in to the desk to cover be-
fore I flew out. Shortly afterward, they called
back and apologized, telling me not to come
into the office, but in that moment, my desire
to be in such a job vanished. I stayed until
the end of the year, but my desire to have a
future there also died.
I am still a highly motivated person, but
for me now it’s about channeling that am-
bition toward doing something that if it all
ends for me suddenly, I will have no regrets.
Ita Ekpoudom
Founder, Tigress VenturesWhat does it mean for American business
when highly educated, highly skilled em-
ployees who have earned substantial work-
place equity decide that the equity accrued
in their personal lives is more valuable?
How does one calculate that in terms of
potential profit or institutional knowledge
lost? Slaughter points out that when cor-
porations and law firms “hemorrhage tal-
ented women who reject lockstep career
paths and question promotion systems
that elevate quantity of hours worked over
the quality of the work itself, the problem
is not with the women.”
Simply put, American corporate life is
set up in a way that makes it very hard for
women to feel successful at home and at
work. Our family-leave policies are abys-
mal compared with other developed coun-
tries, and the percentage of American
women in the workforce has continued
to drop since it peaked in 2010, while it is
rising in other countries. Does a corporate
culture that devalues families also kill am-
bition? In our poll, 68% of women and 74%
of men said they believe ambition is not
something a person is born with but a char-
acter trait that is developed. What happens
if conditions aren’t ripe for development?
Recently Bain & Co. conducted a
study in which the consulting firm asked
1,000 men and women at U.S. companies
whether they aspired to top management.
For employees with two or fewer years of
service, women outpaced men in aspira-
tion. After two years, their aspiration di-
minished by 60%; men’s remained con-
stant. When Bain interviewed more seniorwomen feel
that ambition
is a character
trait that is
developed,
not innate7 IN 10
of women have
felt regret about
not having been
more ambitious
at some point in
their livesof women in
their 20s say
being publicly
recognized as
ambitious
makes them
feel empoweredsay it’s
embarrassing