As childcare costs soar and offices reopen, women are paying the price.
Miya Walker, a mother of a 3-year-old in Georgia, said childcare costs and the obligation to return to work forced her to become a stay-at-home mom.
Are women really less ambitious than men?
This week, Lean In and McKinsey & Company highlighted the “ambition gap” in their annual study on women in the workplace. The study found that women and men at all levels are “equally committed” to their careers and motivated to do their best work. However, women lag behind men in wanting to reach the next rung on the career ladder, with 80% of women aiming for a promotion compared to 86% of men. A study of women in the workplace found that the gap widened significantly between entry-level and senior levels.
The idea of a difference in ambition was not well received on social media.
Women are not giving up on their ambitions. “They are simply opting out of a workplace tailored to the needs of men, where they have fewer responsibilities for caring for children and the elderly, can stay in the office for hours on end, can make last-minute business trips, and don’t have to shoulder the emotional or mental burdens of home,” writes Care Gap editor-in-chief Blessing Adesiyan.
“The gap is not an ambition,” she says. “The gaps are care, sponsorship, visibility, equity, flexibility, safety, and support.”
According to Adesiyan, here’s the real story behind LeanIn data: Women have fewer sponsors, less demanding jobs and promotions, are more penalized for remote and flexible work, are more likely to experience burnout, and have less job security.
“And we look back and ask why women aren’t ‘leaning in’ enough,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
“My ambitions didn’t shrink, but my bandwidth did.”
Life and career coach Andrea Bombino, who has been working with mothers for five years, said that in her own experience as a mother, lack of ambition has never been a reason to “pause, pivot, or change direction in your career.”
“What I have seen time and time again is that women are cornered by a system that makes work, health, and full participation in society nearly impossible without adequate support,” Bombino wrote on LinkedIn. “It was never about ambition. It was always about infrastructure, care and whether women were given the conditions to fully thrive.”
“The story of the ambition gap has always bothered me. As a working mother, my ambition hasn’t waned, but my bandwidth has diminished because I’m juggling two jobs,” writes recruiter Putri Adriani. “Unless we stop treating caregiving as a private problem for women to solve quietly, nothing will change.”
LeanIn blames ‘support gap’ with employers
Much of the data from the LeanIn study, the largest survey of women in the U.S. workplace, supports claims of a “support gap,” a lack of support for women in the workplace.
For example, nearly 25% of entry-level and senior-level women who are not interested in promotions said personal obligations made it difficult for them to take on additional work, compared to 15% of men.
Only about half of the companies surveyed said that career advancement for women is a top priority. Additionally, some employers do not provide support for career advancement, especially for women. This is part of a broader diversity, equity, and inclusion rollback spurred by President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies during his second term.
“If companies don’t do the right thing to support all of their employees, women will leave,” LeanIn founder and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg told Bloomberg.
Ambition gap? Depends on how you define it
The so-called “ambition gap” has become a burden considering the burdens women typically carry. What does it mean to be ambitious?
A survey released earlier this year by Women’s Network Chief and Harris Poll found that 86% of women in senior leadership positions are more ambitious today than they were five years ago. In a national survey that took a broader view of ambition, women ranked financial success, decision-making power, time and flexibility, and other aspects of ambition at the bottom of the list for job titles.
“An incredible 92% feel energized by their future professional growth, and 61% of senior women leaders believe they can reach their highest potential now or in the next five years,” the report states. “Women aren’t ‘quietly quitting’ their ambitions. They’re rejecting rules that don’t work for them and rewriting strategies that weren’t written for them.”
