Are women really less ambitious than men?

In their annual look at women in the workplace this week, LeanIn and McKinsey & Co. highlighted an “ambition gap.” Women and men at all levels are “equally committed” to their careers and motivated to do their best work, the survey found. But women trailed men in the desire to grab the next rung on the corporate ladder, with 80% of women seeking to be promoted versus 86% of men. That gap widened significantly at the entry and senior levels, the Women in the Workplace survey found.

The idea of an ambition gap didn't go over well on social media.

Women aren’t opting out of ambition; they are just opting out of a workplace that was built for the needs of men who have fewer caregiving responsibilities for children or elders, can be in the office until all hours and travel at the last minute and do not have to carry the emotional or mental load of a household, wrote Blessing Adesiyan, editor in chief of “The Care Gap.”

"The gap is not ambition," she said. "The gap is care, sponsorship, visibility, fairness, flexibility, safety and support."

The real story hidden in the LeanIn data, according to Adesiyan: Women have fewer sponsors, get fewer stretch assignments and promotions, are more often penalized for remote or flexible work, suffer from higher burnout and have less job security.

“And then we turn around and ask why women aren’t ‘leaning in’ hard enough?” she wrote on LinkedIn.

'My ambition didn't shrink, my bandwidth did'

In her five years working with mothers and in her own experience as a mom, Andrea Bombino, a life and career coach, said she has never seen lack of ambition as the reason they “pause, downshift or redirect their careers.”

“What I have seen, over and over, is women pushed to the edge by systems that make full participation in work, health and society nearly impossible without adequate support,” Bombino wrote on LinkedIn. “It has never been about ambition. It has always been about infrastructure, care and whether women are given the conditions to fully engage.”

“The ambition gap narrative has always bothered me. As a working mom, my ambition didn't shrink, my bandwidth did. Because I'm doing two jobs,” recruiter Putri Adriani wrote. “Until we stop treating caregiving as a personal problem women need to solve quietly, nothing changes.”

LeanIn blames employers and the 'support gap'

Much of the data in the LeanIn survey – the largest study of women in the workplace in the United States – backs up the contention of a “support gap,” that the workplace doesn’t have women's backs.

For example, nearly 25% of entry- and senior-level women who are not interested in being promoted said their personal obligations made it hard to take on additional work versus 15% of men.

Only about half of surveyed companies said women’s career advancement is a high priority. And some employers offer no support to advance women’s careers specifically, part of the broader diversity, equity and inclusion pullback spurred by President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies in his second term.

“When companies don’t do the right thing to support everyone in the workforce, they’re causing women to lean out,” LeanIn founder and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg told Bloomberg.

Ambition gap? Depends on how you define it

In light of the heavy load women typically carry, the so-called “ambition gap” has become a loaded term. What does it mean to be ambitious anyway?

A study earlier this year from the women’s network Chief and The Harris Poll found that 86% of women in senior leadership positions are more ambitious today than they were five years ago. In the national survey that took a much broader view of ambition, women prioritized financial success, decision-making power, time and flexibility and other aspects of ambition, with job title ranking last.

“An incredible 92% are energized by the professional growth still ahead and 61% of senior women leaders believe they’re at their peak power now or will be in the next five years,” the report found. “Women aren’t ‘quiet quitting’ on ambition. They’re rejecting the rules that never served them and rewriting the playbook that wasn’t written for them.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Women less ambitious than men? The internet leans in on 'ambition gap'

Reporting by Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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