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...