Glass ceiling or lack of ambition?
By Madeleine Bunting (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-01 06:19

LONDON: Ask a woman if she is ambitious and you either get a short, horrified "No," or a long speech in which the word is defined, redefined, qualified and explained. After a generation of women working outside the home, they are still squirming with embarrassment around an old problem ambition.

That is what jumps off the pages of the recently published book, "A Woman's Place is in the Boardroom" (Palgrave Macmillan).

In an attempt to explain why women account for only 3.7 per cent of executive board members of the FTSE 100 list of top companies in the United Kingdom and what can be done about it, authors Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham interviewed dozens of women on their way up the corporate hierarchy, their bosses and the headhunters. What peppered these interviews were comments about women's perceived lack of ambition.

"Some women are just not interested in making the sacrifices, because they don't value what they get for it. Men value status and position much more," said a former human resources director of an investment bank.

Another senior female executive observed: "I don't see as many absolutely driven women as men."

Implicit in many of these kinds of remarks is a perception of ambition as competitive, aggressive and driven, and that is the problem, says Thomson: "There's a mismatch of perception. Male patterns of ambition mean that the man makes it explicit; he has no embarrassment about saying he's ambitious and what job he wants next."

On the other hand, women often don't articulate the job they want "they hope to be noticed, but you can't expect your line manager to intuit what you want."

This kind of behaviour can be characterized as "passive" by colleagues and bosses. It can also be seen as lacking the drive and hunger needed for the job.

A key ingredient to fulfil ambition is self-promotion; Thomson reckons decisions to promote someone are 10 per cent based on the person's skills, 30 per cent on being known to be capable, and a whopping 60 per cent about being simply known you are heard at meetings, you speak up, you network. You have to throw yourself around. But this is where women often fail; "too many women are modest and self-deprecating it's the 'only little me' syndrome," concludes Thomson.

The underlying problem, argues Dr Anna Fels, an American psychiatrist and author of a study on female ambition, "Necessary Dreams," is that "ambition has been confused with narcissism a rise above others at the expense of others."

While it is acceptable even admirable in men ambitious women are often seen as aggressive and unfeminine. The difference is how society shapes men and women's aspirations to fulfil different roles. The thesis of her book is that both men and women share a deep need for recognition.

"Where men and women get attention and affirmation is where they will put their energy." So if a female senior executive gets a lot of negative feedback, other women will be turned off. The stereotype of the "ball-breaking" female boss acts only as a deterrent to other women.

"Society defines key elements of identity differently for men and women both will pursue very aggressively those things which make them feel validated. For women, marriage and children can dominate their thinking; men's status is defined by job and income."

The socialization into restricting female ambition begins very early, argued Fels, as girls learn those skills of self-deprecation and modesty which ensure men do not find them threatening.

Those women who do get to the top are disrupting these patterns of behaviour and, Thomson argues, they can only be "catalysts for change" in organizations that have been built usually entirely around male forms of interaction. The fallout can be costly as men fight back.

"On a very practical level, women's voices are softer and they have to struggle to be heard that can make them sound shrill. Men know how to hold the floor and won't give women space. Women have to learn skills of how to make a point in a meeting and ensure they keep ownership of their own ideas."

These issues of self-belief and organizational culture are a far greater block to female ambition, argued Thomson, than the much commented on double shift of work and home. In her study, many of the women had older children and enough money to cushion the demands of their private lives, and yet still they were struggling to make it through the glass ceiling.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an American economist, is heading a taskforce of major United States companies into women's careers. She argues that there is a lack of alignment for women between career and home the two are often in conflict in a way they are not for men.

Sixty per cent of American women have "non-linear" careers as they take breaks to have children or to look after their parents. After they return to work, levels of ambition are much lower than before the break.

"Our research shows that they come back with a wider set of values in contrast to the tunnel vision of working up the career ladder. The list of priority is re-ordered so that money drops, overtaken by meaning and purpose in the job and, of course, flexibility," says Hewlett.

"With those values at the top, it seriously affects how successful you can be. These women defined success very differently it was more to do with the meaning of their work than the job title. Also the quality of friendship with colleagues was very important."

Significantly, the two women I found that were happy to acknowledge their own ambition were both self-employed and bringing up families in their 40s. They were well aware that they defined their own work and set themselves their own benchmarks of achievement.

"I don't want to rule the world, but I do want to have the best idea," said Jane, an independent communications consultant. She knew that her ambition had gone into abeyance at times while her children were very small, but said that in some ways motherhood had boosted her ambition, giving her a new confidence.

Kate, a writer, defined her ambition as: "I have such a strong sense of what I want to do, and I want to do it as well as I can." Growing up surrounded by left-wing politics, ambition was frowned on as careerism and, she says, it took Madonna and Julie Burchill to make naked female ambition acceptable.

"Maybe I had to wait to have children to sort it out. I taught myself to speak in public. I can now stand up in front of 200 people to speak and I really love it."

But the matter of self-presentation is not straightforward, she admitted, and she has noticed that by way of compensating for the apparent contradiction between femininity and assertion, her dress has become more feminine the more "effective I've become in the world."

(China Daily 11/01/2005 page13)