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Comment by CryoLogic | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, it is deathly hard to meet ambitious women. I've known many ambitious men, but women in my experience seem to lack the desire to really go all out in their careers.

I am sure there are biological factors, including variations in androgenic hormones etc. But I do believe it is largely cultural and this study matches what I've seen in my own life quite closely.

This is unfortunate because I am attracted to more ambitious women.

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I had a direct report for years. She was very smart, capable, effective, and a great thinking partner on my leadership team. She also got an unfair (IMO) amount of blowback from her interactions with other leaders.

"Rough", "abrasive", "difficult" were the common labels. While there were things she may have done differently, I don't think I'd have seen the same blowback from an identically-acting male leader. I suspect that her experience is common and that if it's gender biased (I think it is), this continual molding could tend to create the outcomes you observe.

Thought experiment: How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy" as compared to how often we say that to young boys?

Or "Imagine that you just heard a mom tell her kid, 'Don't be so bossy!' What gender is the child that she is addressing?"

> How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy"

I can't say, but every time I wind up watching a children's show targeted at girls (usually in a lobby or exercise room), the protagonists are all highly assertive and there's often heavy-handed promotion of the subtext "boys are dumb and useless and it's OK to be a complete asshole to them if it gets you what you want."

If you saw the exact same content in a show you perceived to be targeted at boys, how certain are you that you'd think the same subtext existed with the gender roles reversed?

When was the last time you saw a children's TV show endorse violence towards women? It was only a few month ago, in a hotel exercise room, that I saw a non-self-defense kick-to-the-balls presented in a positive light (giggles from the protagonists, affirming + explictly gendered statement from the narrator). I was upset, but not shocked, because I've seen it before.

Hopefully it's just part of the natural swing towards over-correction and it'll all settle out in another few decades, but a corresponding overcorrection in corporate policy could get ugly. Psychopaths do well enough in the corporate environment as it is.

I have a friend who mentioned his 'kick in the balls' theory..it goes something like ..every chick flick will have a 'kick in the balls'(literally) slap stick scene because it is cathartic to women and that Hollywood knows that and will cater to that unconscious trigger for laughs. I started looking for it in movies after that and I have to admit that it's true that there would be at least one hurt male genitalia routine. Remarkable.

>Imagine that you just heard a mom tell her kid, 'Don't be so bossy!' What gender is the child that she is addressing?

Imagine if you heard a parent tell their child "don't be an asshole". What gender is the child? I think it's true that women are held to a different standard when it comes to assertiveness, but the existence of a female-specific insult is not evidence of that. There are plenty of male-specific insults of the same nature. Asshole, dick, douche, prick, bastard, etcetera

I agree with your counter-example for boys. It's a good example.

I do however think that this might lead to girls being discouraged from becoming bosses (a bad thing[1]) while boys being discouraged from becoming assholes (a good thing).

[1] - Or at a minimum, a biased thing.

> Thought experiment: How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy" as compared to how often we say that to young boys?

I think a more enlightening question is:

Are parents/teachers etc being overly unfair towards girls than they would be towards boys for the same bossy behaviour?

I'd argue no. If anything it is the opposite. Only different language is used.

> I don't think I'd have seen the same blowback from an identically-acting male leader.

Let's take a step back and remove gender from the discussion.

My experience working with senior leadership has been to get results you end up stepping on toes. As such you get called all sorts of things.

It's also my experience that the way a person acts towards their boss is different from the way they act with their peers which again is different than the way they act towards their subordinates.

With this in mind are you sure it had anything to do with sexism?

What you say is all valid.

Am I sure? I'm an engineer, so no, I can't be 100% sure.

women in my experience seem to lack the desire to really go all out in their careers

It depends what you are optimising for. If men "go all out" but experience burnout, stress ulcers, depression, carpal tunnel syndrome, problems from bad diet and poor posture and lack of fresh air and exercise, yadda yadda then are women wise or foolish to emulate them? What about the life expectancy gap that no-one likes to talk about?

Consider that many men who sacrifice their health to "ambition" are doing so to provide for or at least to impress a woman. Who is really exploiting who?

i didn't see any value judgments in the gp. it's common knowledge these days that a career could very well jeopardize your physical and mental health. i think that was the exact point gp was trying to make - women exhibit less sacrificial behavior in pursuing their careers.

This. Much of the conversation on this thread has made work sound like a hallowed calling, something to be prized and cherished. But it's just a job people. And it's equally brutal on the minds and bodies of men and women alike. I hope my daughters can find a better way than just working some pointless corporate gig for a paycheck. I don't know what that looks like yet, but I do know the world will look a lot different in a decade or two when they become adults.

I think you may be misreading the study. Based on the abstract, my takeaway was that women are not less ambitious, but that single women feel social pressure to appear to be less ambitious. Which does eventually play into what actions they take. But the fact that non-single women do _not_ follow the same pattern is strong evidence that the concealment of ambition is a social issue, not a biological difference.

I think it's more accurate to say it's men that feel social pressure to be more ambitious than they might be otherwise.

It's certainly a lot easier for an unambitious low-income woman to find a husband than vice versa.

It's actually quite easy to meet ambitious women in a major city. I mean, realistically, they are so ambitious they probably neither have the time nor need to meet you.

Can confirm, living in DC.

Maybe it's the other way round - maybe it's the women who are "normally" ambitious, but it's the men who feel more pressure to be successful and thus ambitious (because women seem to value that more than men, in average, as far as sexual relationships are concerned), so you see more ambitious men than women.

I'm guessing both effects have an effect in reality.

> In my experience, it is deathly hard to meet ambitious women.

If we believe the posted study, you might have met several, but they are just hiding their ambitions from you.

I have several close friends who are extremely ambitious women. By and large, they are too busy working 80+ hour weeks as surgical residents or profs trying to get tenure to spend any time dating. Those who are married met their partners earlier in life when they were less busy (my wife and I met while in school, for example) or through work (plenty of couples form during residency).

If you want to meet ambitious women, find ways to interact with careers that require ambition. Typically something that requires an advanced education will have ambitious people by default.

What this study shows is that you've met a lot of ambitious women, but they pretended to not be ambitious around you because they expected you to react badly.

Just move to NYC. Or go to an Ivy League university.

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