Is or why is ambition in women seen as a bad thing?

[StealthPolarBear]

I feel as though I need to apologise, explain or downplay the fact I am ambitious. There needa to be a 'reason' to throw myself into the job om doing or go for another, as though I should want to get away with doing as little as possible.
how much of this is in my head? How much is because I'm a woman or a mother? How much depends on where you work?

I only feel pressure from my female peers to be honest, I live in an affluent area so many ladies my age no longer work or work in part time non career oriented jobs, I am therefore a bit of an outcast because I am seen as putting career first if that makes sense?

i feel the opposite pressure too since becoming sahm. not working is looked upon as being a lazy arse or a maintained rich woman.

I do understand yr side too though.

I think it is a situation of 'having to be a superwoman' i.e excellwnt full on mum and wife and succesful businesswoman all at the same time.

I work for one of the mobile networks, ambitious women are ten a penny round here, nothing unusual at all to me.

Empathy to everyone who struggles with this. As far as I can tell, it is hard, however you choose to handle it. I have learned a great deal from this board that has informed what I do. For all that I largely lurk, this is an incredible place and I have read a lot here over the past years.

The link to Managing Bias on Facebook is useful. The likability / competence tradeoff one is helpful. Thank you museumum for sharing those resources. I may use them elsewhere.

I feel as though I need to apologise, explain or downplay the fact I am ambitious.

Anecdote alert: I do not feel this need.

I have been described as opinionated (twice), impertinent, told that I should wait my turn, put myself forward at the suggestion of one person only to be told I am too junior or not competent by the person who might grant the opportunities to me, been told that I come across as arrogant. I am not the only woman I know with a catalogue of robust feedback of this nature.

My choice to share the fact that I am ambitious - through putting myself forward for opportunities - comes at a real emotional cost to me in that I am hurt and angry. When my competence is questioned I feel hurt and angry and spend ages searching and searching for objective evidence to the contrary - or even reassurance from someone independent of the interaction.

If I put myself forward for office housework opportunities I am granted them immediately. I have a script for turning them down.

I am not particularly motivated by money or by power. Other people appear confused by this, particularly when they threaten to withdraw money or promotion opportunities unless I do gender better and I do not react by doing gender better (subjective view, this is my take on the situation, coloured as it is by my emotional relationship to my job and my colleagues).

FWIW I am married and I am not a mother.

to you all.

Right place marking to re read when I have the brain power agIn.
Thanks all

erinaceus - re: "robust feedback", I have several times been in a management meeting where we've been discussing team member performance. It is hard to try to push the meeting around to considering that "outspoken", "opinionated", etc are all qualities that we have said in the past we desperately need. Needless to say, it is the outstanding, confident women who tend to attract these descriptions.

I love the term "office housework". Do you mean what I think you mean - i.e. the unglamourous, low profile labour that helps to keep things running smoothly, but gets you no promotions/recognition? Booking meetings, taking & circulating minutes etc. Chasing people to prepare presentations. Work that ambitious young men do not volunteer for.

Have you read 'lean in' by Sheryl Sandberg? It describes this perfectly IMO. I also liked 'Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office'.

Women have to explain themselves whether they are or are not ambitious.

There is no "right amount" of ambitious for a woman to be.

Andit is always other people's business.

I disagree. In over 35 years in the legal profession I have met many men and women who were very ambitious. No one queried it or made them explain. It is called career progression.

I have also met women and men who are not ambitious to go beyond a certain level, who put in the contractual hours and no more. That is far easier for a woman to do without attracting criticism.

Because women should not aspire for anything better than their present circumstances. Man goes out and gets food. Woman tends to children and the house. Women aren't needed for anything else except baby making and house making.

Or so he said.

Who is "he" ? Sorry but that is just nonsense.

In my experience, there are three key elements to this;

(1) I feel that by being 'ambitious' there is an assumption that I'm either (a) taking the testosterone-fueled route of the 1980s and trampling on everyone else on my way to the top or (b) being ruthlessly sly and maneuvering myself, possibly using feminine wiles, into positions and situations that are personally very beneficial.

Neither of these routes is seen as particularly appropriate for women.

(2) I also feel that certain people (it has to be said, mostly women, my MIL and my own mother particularly) assume that by being 'ambitious' I am also trying to position myself as independent from my DH, which is somehow indicative that I'm somehow less dedicated. By having my own career that I want to make the most of, I'm financially solvent without him, in fact I earn more than he does. I have my own life, identity, friends and success that doesn't involve him in any way.

My mum and MIL don't recognise this way of life. My mum and MIL didn't have any friends that aren't/weren't wives of their husband's friends. Both earned significantly less that their DH's and both saw dependency, or at least inequality, as completely normal and natural. For example, my mum once told me that her and my dad were completely equal because, in her words 'Any time I wanted money out of the joint account, I'd only have to ask and he'd say "yes of course"'

(3) Related to the above, being 'ambitious' means I spend a lot of time at work and am occasionally away at meetings and conferences with work. It's the same for DH. What this means is that I'm not 'in charge' of our domestic life. I don't do all the cleaning, cooking, washing, shopping etc. We split everything roughly 50:50 because we're both busy. This, of course, completely goes against expectations of women as overseers of the domestic sphere. My mum always asks me if I've seen any good offers in Tesco whilst shopping and can never compute that I very very rarely actually go shopping, DH does most of it.

An ambitious man is more likely to have a SAHP so there is no implied criticism of parenting because children are well looked after by mummy.

An ambitious woman (with kids) is more likely to be relying on wall to wall childcare so faces a barrage of criticism of her parenting (often as an excuse for general workplace sexism).

Almost a third of the mums in dd's nursery class are set to resign from well paid jobs by the start of reception in Sept. The dads all continue to work.

slightlyglitterbrained

It is hard to try to push the meeting around to considering that "outspoken", "opinionated", etc are all qualities that we have said in the past we desperately need.

My strategy, potentially adaptable to your situation, is to lean into these descriptors. As in

Person giving feedback in an accusatory tone You are opinionated
erinaceus without missing a beat, with eye contact and smile oh, totally

It takes practise. Where I do not agree with the feedback, I typically wait until I have stopped feeling angry to bring it up (days, sometimes), ask what was meant by the term, and clarify where the person giving feedback and I do not agree. There is a cost to this in that I devote time and emotional energy to tolerating my anger and initiating these conversations at all - I have been gaslighted before when I initiate them - but it became my choice and I do not think I will have to do it forever, although maybe when I change organisations.

RE office housework

Do you mean what I think you mean - i.e. the unglamourous, low profile labour that helps to keep things running smoothly, but gets you no promotions/recognition? Booking meetings, taking & circulating minutes etc. Chasing people to prepare presentations. Work that ambitious young men do not volunteer for.

Absolutely. I have a script for declining, or I decline without giving a reason. I have no qualms about not doing my fair share. I volunteer for the office housework that best suits my capabilities but not the rest. When I run meetings, I assign the roles of notetaker and timekeeper, take no notes, request that the notetaker circulate the minutes, and feel no guilt if they never do. I rotate the assignees and after the roles are assigned I check that no-one has any problems, for example the notetaker should not be someone who has to leave early.

Assigning the most senior person in the room to take notes takes some gumption but if they there for an update and not to contribute to the discussion nor make a decision it can be remarkably effective at levelling power structures.

One of the single best pieces of advice I received early in my current job was to never do the training that would enable me to do certain specified administrative tasks. The administrative staff in the company are all trained in doing these and willingly do it for me despite my being first-rung in my career.

Lest I sound arrogant (heaven forbid), I did not develop this way of working overnight. I cried buckets, read a bunch of books and a lot of this board, had to learn certain specific skills and to sacrifice certain things as well. However, I am not unique and I work in an organisation employing enough powerful women and men who are not sexist who willingly mentored me across myriad situations until I found a way that was true to me. It was worth the sacrifices; the tragedy is that I was obliged to sacrifice anything at all.

I think women just can't do anything right: if they work FT it is sometimes seen as neglectful, stay at home is also a problem, pt=problem
I am ambitious and FT but I don't get any stick for it though

I think ambition sometimes reads as selfishness. The most ambitious people are always the most selfish, in the sense that they put their wants and desires before those of the people that inevitably support them.

Therefore when I see Barack Obama, I don't just see an ambitious man, I see a wife and children who have made enormous sacrifices.

So a reaction to ambition is a reaction to selfishness. Men are expected to be selfish; women most certainly are not.

Oh I do that thing with feedback erinaceus. I am also a gimmer, so when I get pulled up on certain traits I add: and do you think in the 30 years I've been in the workplace no-one has ever mentioned I'm opinionated? I think we both know I would have fixed it if it had ever been an issue in my previous roles.

Very satisfying.

I think a lot of the ambition angst comes from your peer group. Most of my friends who have had children have stayed in the workplace, but there's one particular group where almost everyone has become a SAHP and they're not hugely supportive to another friend who has stayed in the corporate world, lots of sighs and 'oh I'm so glad I don't have to do that any more'. Whereas I have my own business from home, which I run round DS' care needs, and that's totally OK with them, worthy of support, no sighs or tinkly laughs.

I imagine if all you hear is what my friend hears, you would start to doubt yourself pretty quickly.

Sounds like its just all in your head, never heard of women needing to down play their ambitions. Seems like another reason to make women come across as more oppressed than they actually are. Imo and it is only my opinion, women have it the easiest.

BorrowedHeart

Imo and it is only my opinion, women have it the easiest.

I am curious. What is it that women have easiest, in your opinion?

No one has it easier. Some people are more inclined to put others' needs above their own; some people want what they want and are prepared to let others support them in realising their ambition. No one gets 'to the top' on their own; anyone who is successful is using other people to prop them up.

Maybe it is an inevitable consequence of putting yourself 'out there', regardless of gender. I don't think there are many work environments where the most suitable people have promotions dropped into their lap based purely on ability. Those who want to progress a career are often more ambitious than they are competent.

Therefore, perhaps the very expression of ambition means that you are automatically tarred with the ruthless/selfish/corporate monkey brush, even when you know that you are not like that - indeed, you know you are the only beacon of awesome ability and modesty in a sea of departmental shite. If only others could see that in you....

Grimarse

...you know you are the only beacon of awesome ability and modesty in a sea of departmental shite. If only others could see that in you....

If this is what a person infers that ambitious people know, then no wonder that person is hostile towards people who they perceived as ambitious. Many people are tribal, and do not like their tribe being declared shite; they also do not like being described as shite themselves when they do not see themselves as such.

However, this does not explain the disproportionate hostility towards ambitious women, which is better accounted for by the likeability/capability trade-off described above.