Lack of Ambition Isn’t the Issue
I recently read an article that brought into focus an issue that has gnawed at the back of my mind for over a decade. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s wonderful and impassioned commencement address at Barnard was so inspiring I forwarded it to dozens of my friends, my children, and posted it in my social media streams. Yet, there was one piece of it that brought back that lingering itch in the recesses of my mind, turned it over and then it dawned on me, finally, after a decade, why it mattered.
This is what spurred the wheels:
The first thing is I encourage you to think big. Studies show very clearly that in our country, in the college-educated part of the population, men are more ambitious than women. They’re more ambitious the day they graduate from college; they remain more ambitious every step along their career path. We will never close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap. But if all young women start to lean in, we can close the ambition gap right here, right now
She then goes on to discuss this:
Of course not everyone wants to jump into the workforce and rise to the top. Life is going to bring many twists and turns, and each of us, each of you, have to forge your own path. I have deep respect for my friends who make different choices than I do, who choose the really hard job of raising children full time, who choose to go part time, or who choose to pursue more nontraditional goals. These are choices that you may make some day, and these are fine choices.
But until that day, do everything you can to make sure that when that day comes, you even have a choice to make. Because what I have seen most clearly in my 20 years in the workforce is this: Women almost never make one decision to leave the workforce. It doesn’t happen that way. They make small little decisions along the way that eventually lead them there. Maybe it’s the last year of med school when they say, I’ll take a slightly less interesting specialty because I’m going to want more balance one day. Maybe it’s the fifth year in a law firm when they say, I’m not even sure I should go for partner, because I know I’m going to want kids eventually.
And the light dawns on me. Despite her profound observation and heartfelt challenge to the young women of Barnard to “lean in” and accomplish what her generation has not, there is a headwind that perhaps they will not be able to overcome. Perhaps the challenge is unfair, and recognizing it is worth discussing.
Somewhere, at some college, there is a generation of young men graduating who are not being offered a choice. In fact, they have never been offered a choice. As soon as they were old enough to grasp the concepts there were several things that became clear to them. First, men work and should plan to work all of their lives. Second, women have choices, men less so.
This not a complaint or a criticism, it is a cultural observation. Women in our society are raised to believe that they have choices about what role they want to choose for their lives. Men are raised to believe their job is to empower women to have those choices.
The point is that it places ambition as a primary driver, unquestioned as a desired attribute, for a man. He needs to get ahead. Not only for his well being, but to prepare for the potential day that, no matter how successful she may be in the workplace, he and his wife or significant other decide she would like to play a different role. Part time, stay at home, takes a few years off, whatever that may be. Again, that won’t be a unilateral decision; it will be a loving mutual decision. But culturally every man knows the day could come when he will want to be able to be the sole earner and provide for his family. The day he will want to provide that choice for his wife.
Men simply don’t spend very much time wondering what their role should be. They spend their time wondering what they want to do, how to achieve that, how to get ahead doing it, where it gets them and how to get there the fastest.
That will certainly drive an ambition gap. Perhaps it is more than we should ask of a generation of our daughters to have all of the choices in the world, yet also be prepared all the time for all of the them.
