people of both
genders would
choose true
love over
reaching the
top of their
chosen fieldMostFROM A SURVEY OF 1,118 ADULTS CONDUCTED
JULY 20–21 BY SURVEY MONKEY
Given the
choice between
retirement and
the job of their
dreams ...of mothers
choose
retirementof women
without kids
choose the job
of their dreamsmothers say
they are more
ambitious on
behalf of their
kids than on
their own
behalf5 IN 10
56 %
55 %
managers, the level of ambition rose but
was still much lower in women. As Orit
Gadiesh wrote with one of the study’s au-
thors, Julie Coffman, on HBR.com, “The
majority of leaders celebrated in a cor-
porate newsletter or an offsite meeting
tend to consist of men hailed for pulling
all-nighters or for networking their way
through the golf course. If corporate rec-
ognition and rewards focus on those be-
haviors, women feel less able, let alone mo-
tivated to try, to make it to the top.”
After 25 years at HBO, executive vice
president Shelley Wright Brindle decided
to leave—not because she didn’t find suc-
cess there but because she wanted to de-
fine success on her own terms. The mother
of three said she’d learned that working
mothers often thrive more in workplaces
that value output over face time: “There
needs to be better ways to facilitate women
to network other than the cocktail thing at
night and the golf thing. If that remains the
primary networking tool, women are never
going to get to the C-suite, because that’s
not the choice they’re going to make.”
When it comes to success in corporate
America, context trumps competence.
“Ambition needs care and feeding,” says
investor and startup advisor Lisa Shalett,
who left Goldman Sachs after two decades
in 2015 with a highly sought-after partner
title. “[It’s] having the kind of informal re-
lationships where you understand, ‘How
do I navigate this path? What do I need to
know? How can I get there?’ Men tend to
be ambitious for things, for positions, for
titles, for results. Women tend to be ambi-
tious to be recognized for performance, to
be valued, to be included, and maybe ex-
pect that good things will come from that.”
Former Barnard College president Deb-
ora Spar believes that entrepreneurial has
replaced ambitious for a new generation.
“I don’t think anyone has ever come in my
office and said, ‘I’m ambitious.’ Everyone I
know is ‘entrepreneurial.’ ” Now a number
of ambitious women are simply channel-
ing their dissatisfaction with traditional
corporate life into fast-growing new busi-
nesses. Katharine Zaleski is the co-founder,
with Milena Berry, of PowerToFly, a web-
based employment service for women who
want to work remotely. “Women aren’t
being less ambitious,” says Zaleski. “They
are just unable to commit to a structure
that was set up for 50% of the population.”
Launched just a year ago, PowerToFly has
connected women to jobs in 43 countries.
Mae O’Malley, a former Google contract
lawyer, established Paragon Legal with the
same idea. O’Malley’s San Francisco firm
employs almost 70 lawyers, most of them
women looking for ways to make their ca-
reers fit their lives, not vice versa. “What
Paragon does is allow them a safe harbor
for a couple of years where they can do
meaningful work such that when they feel
like they can do it, they can step right back
in. Prior to models like Paragon, you either
stayed in and worked the 100-hour weeks
or you leave, and you don’t come back.”
“One of the best reasons to strive to be
the boss,” Slaughter writes, “is the much
greater latitude you have to make sure
meetings and work are in sync with your
schedule rather than someone else’s.” Yes,
it’s a first-world problem; the woman work-
ing three shifts to put food on the table is
not losing sleep over whether she is leaning
in enough. But more women need to see a
clear path to the boss’s seat. A recent na-
tional poll of nonworking U.S. adults ages
25 to 54 found that 61% of women who
weren’t working cited family responsibili-
ties as the reason (for men it was 37%); of
those who hadn’t looked for a job in a year,
almost 75% said they would consider going
back to work if a job offered flexible hours
or the opportunity to work from home.When I started work, I had this
very specific idea of what ambition
looked like: you spend as much time
at the office as possible; you take on
every project you can.
My email password was NeverSettle. I never
understood why people would leave the of-
fice at 6 when they could stay until 8 or 9. I
felt like they weren’t giving their all.
That really started to change several
years ago. I started to think, “How do I