A new survey from More magazine confirms a recent assertion by Sheryl Sandberg, Google's Chief Operating Officer, that women of our generation have "blown it," that we haven't dreamed big enough, and that we "lack ambition." Hard words for a 40-something overachieving woman to accept, especially in light of the gains that my female colleagues have made in the workplace today.
The survey shows that 43 percent of American women between the ages 35 and 60 describe themselves as being less ambitious than they were a decade ago. Only 15 percent reported feeling more ambitious.
At first glance, I wasn't too surprised by these results. For women, climbing the corporate ladder while raising kids, nurturing a marriage, and tending to the housework is enough to drive even the most stable woman insane. And as the statistics show, women today still do twice the amount of childcare and three times the amount of housework as their spouses, even if both are working full time.
When I dug a little deeper into the survey results, I discovered something that did surprise me -- women's waning career ambitions are not a result of the conflicting demands of work and family life. Only 15 percent of respondents said household or childcare duties were holding them back in their careers.
Rather, women are not pushing ahead in their careers because they don't want to deal with the politics, the pressure and the responsibility of a leadership role. A full 73 percent say they would not apply for their boss's job. Simply put, the rewards of a bigger title don't outweigh the drawbacks.
According to Jennifer Braunschweiger, deputy editor of More, women's ambition isn't really declining. It's being re-channeled.
"Today's women are ambitious in a different way," explained Braunschweigher in a recent interview on CBS's Early Show. "Valuing time over money may signal a shift in ambition, and the beginning of a more nuanced definition of success, one that takes into account the many facets of a woman's life."
So what is it that women want? Braunschweiger says:
Flexibility is about having control. And that is what women want. They want to be able to decide when they work and how they work. Women want more me time. They've figured out how to juggle career and raising kids. Time for themselves has dropped out of the equation.
Samantha Parent Walravens is the author of TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, chosen by the New York Times as the first pick for the Motherlode Book Club.
Follow Samantha Parent Walravens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@nosuperwoman
Sarah O'Meara: Why a Mother's Unhealthy Attachment to Her Kids Starts Long Before They're Born
As far as the house work and child care, those numbers tend to vary a lot and most often towards women even when it is shown again and again that it is close to split.
When one rolls through the "women's' section, it is usually filed with "sex", "power" and a combo of the two.
Expectations for males and females simply are not the same and women know this. If all else fails, women know they can make sure they look good, as good as they can and use their "power" which most understand is sex/sexuality centered with men and when necessary with employent situations. Of course not always but often. Most know the dog and pony show and not all are wooed by cleavage, legs, and eye lashes.
For all the emphases of equality in the work place/wages-women do not have the same expectations as men. They are not expected and demanded by law to register for selective service.
Like wars or not, shit happens and men go to war, some women but mostly men. Men are the cops and firemen and EMTs, for the most part. Men do run the majority of corporations as well as the mililtary. Women enjoys the fruits of these labors, say they want more leadership but most know they do not have to take a leadership role because men will do it.
And for all the emphases on producing children, seems women forget that the role men play in this. Producing children has become a double edged sword for some and the saivng grace at the same time.
Until all expectations are equally shared by women, including military service, things will only change so much and in the back of their mind, women know, they do not have to do anything more than what they want to do because men are doing what they themselves do not have to do.
This is a false statement. As your own link shows, when accounting for unpaid and paid work, men and women work the same number of hours per week....and have for decades.
I recently went to a dermatologist concerned about a mole on my back. I was told I have "Wisdom Spots". I have found that getting older doesn't necessarily mean getting more money/stuff/prestige is better. There comes a point when the meaning of life is what one can do to help others achieve a level of accomplishment/awareness: to share in the gifts of being comfortable and sustainable. To love oneself and condemn greed (and thus help eradicate exploitation) is a lesson I now hold as dear as "getting ahead"...I consider this more important than a socially acceptable step up the ladder of "success" (especially when there is still a glass ceiling).
You make some interesting points SofiaSeglu and I’d like to delve a little deeper on a couple of your points so that a wider perspective might be perhaps grasped.
1) I think that you are right in stating that women more closely resemble Nature but we must remember that the evolutionary drive of Nature is “to strive for balance.” And the female without the male is not balance. Therefore, despite what is perhaps seen by either of the sexes, both provide a pivotal role which is not redundant and completely necessary for attaining balance within the system of Nature.
2) Following in the footsteps of 1, nothing in Nature is redundant and everything is needed in order to come to acquiring further balance. And this is why we must be so very careful before we cast something aside or argue for its elimination.
3) Evolutionarily speaking, men do most of what they do, and some such as Freud would argue even further than this, in order to impress women.
And this again brings us back to the issue of balance since one seeks to provide for the other but this too also brings about a curious question as well: If men seek to provide for the desires of women then are women to blame for the coarseness of men, if what they do is simply to appease women?
Or, just as feasibly, are men seeking to “impress” women based off of their own ideas of what it is a woman desires and therefore sometimes hitting the mark, fulfilling the desire of a woman, and sometimes missing the mark, acting according to the perspective of the male which can not fundamentally understand the perspective of the female?
I think to answer these questions human nature must be studied from a much more fundamental level then our current sciences have revealed.
But I think you hit the nail on the head at the close of your comment when you harkened back to that evolutionary purpose of ours and Nature, balance. And while I think it is indeed necessary to delve much deeper into ourselves and each other, in order to attain continued and more substantial changes which promote increasing balance, whether that be amongst males, females, or all us together, I think that simply acknowledging the fact that “balance” is the goal, is in itself, a foundation upon which a great future establishment can one day be built.
So what you're saying is that women don't want to be leaders. Fair enough. But realize that nearly all occupations that provide great wealth and power are leadership positions. That's what they're rewarding...your ability to lead a large group of people.
"Our country faces a talent crunch if we can't figure out how to retain and promote women to leadership positions."
Agreed. But you can't force leadership on people. Leadership is part of your personality. Basically, some people are born leaders and others are followers. You need both. It's unfortunate that most leaders tend to be narcissists. The world desperately needs more good leaders who put the interests of those they lead ahead of their own self interest.
Wasn't feminism all about getting women into these useless jobs? Isn't it odd to call jobs useless considering they provide the services we need to survive in our advanced industrialized nation? Someone needs to work just a question of who and how long.
Nature is driving us to reproduce and care for our offspring. Both are things feminist a downplay in significance by suggesting women prioritize the pursuit of wealth and power. If women are ready to go their own way instead of celebrating a divisive power hungry ideology, I think men will be happy to join them.
Mother's and father's at home can do a lot more than just care for children and the mother's of the past did a lot more than feminist give them credit for. Mother's were the glue keeping whole communities together. Their role of nurturer tended to the emotional and spiritual well being of all they touched. That's hard to do when work sucks you dry. None of us can have it all. We have to trust each other and embrace the truth of our interdependence to make the most of life.
Oh..and not for men? Or men don't have the luxury of saying...."Hey maybe I will take a few years off to stay at home"...and be applauded for it? Ya. Thought so.
Welcome to a man's world.