Last week a report crossed my desk from Boston-based consulting firm Bain & Company, which contains some statistics that took me aback. It says that women are much more ambitious than men when they first arrive at new jobs. Some 43% say they aspire to reach a top management position. By contrast, only 34% of men share that goal at the outset of their careers. But, even more striking, just two years into the job, women’s goals fall off a cliff. At that point only 16% say they want to become top managers, while men stay steady at 34%. The report is called “Everyday Moments of Truth: Frontline managers are key to women’s career opportunities.” It aims to help managers encourage women’s ambitions at work, and all these statistics appear in its first few pages.
Women’s ambitions get stronger if they manage to move up the ladder. Some 35% who have worked in a job for more than two years and have become a junior manager or senior leader say they aspire to the C-suite. For men of that level though, the number jumps way up, to 56%.
Following on those statistics, it’s not surprising that women’s confidence levels are lower than men’s. Despite the fact that 43% of starting women want to reach top management, only 27% say they have the confidence to do so. That confidence number plummets to 13% by the time women have been working for two years. Perhaps not surprisingly, once they’ve advanced beyond that point, their confidence climbs back a bit, with 29% saying they have the confidence they need to get ahead, but it’s still no match for their male counterparts. Some 28% of men are confident going in, 25% are confident after two years and among those with more than two years’ experience, 55% say they have the confidence to reach a senior job.
What is going on here? Are women suddenly becoming overwhelmed with the desire to have families and pursue a Mommy track? Are we still in a moment where women really don’t want to “lean in” as billionaire Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has been exhorting us to do?
Despite the conventional wisdom, marital and parental status have nothing to do with women’s aspirations, says the report’s co-author, Bain partner Julie Coffman. The marriage and children stats are the same for the women who want to get ahead as for those who don’t. The reason, she suggests, is that “they don’t feel supported by their supervisors and they have a hard time fitting into stereotypes of success within the company.” Adds Coffman, “Those that stopped aspiring for top jobs said they don’t see themselves in those roles. That feeling ate away at their aspirations to make it.” As important, she says, is the lack of support from supervisors and the feeling that they don’t have the right role models.
The report goes on to offer some anodyne advice about how to encourage women’s ambitions at work and how to boost “engagement,” that ubiquitous word in human resource writing that means getting people to like their jobs: Invest in getting to know employees as individuals, communicate expectations, equip and train managers, track progress and key metrics.
These recommendations are obvious and predictable but they’re also important.
Coffman did tell me something that I find encouraging. This is anecdotal and wasn’t covered in the report but she says that the women she knows who are dropping out of conventional jobs are doing so not because they want to attend to a traditional family role. They are leaving to pursue what she calls an “industry passion,” whether it’s starting their own businesses or moving into some sort of work that they find more meaningful, where they can have an impact. That’s striking and it’s good news.
For the report, Bain surveyed 1000 people in March 2014 from public companies, private firms, government and nonprofits.
