Through every interaction with a coworker who labeled you unlikable when you took on a position of leadership. Through every experience with a boss who denied you a promotion or questioned your commitment to your work for “daring” to negotiate a raise. Through every time you heard the word “ambitious” weaponized against prominent women in an attempt to disqualify them from holding power.
While ambition in boys and men is praised and nurtured into power, profit, and prestige, ambition in girls and women is still too often seen as unattractive and undesirable, and this can carry steep personal, professional and social penalties.
That’s what we’ll be digging into each week at “Too Ambitious” the ambivalence, the discomfort, even the denial of our own ambition.
Why we feel it and how it can keep us from advancing in our careers in the way we should. How it can keep us from making the money we deserve or getting the fulfillment we want. And what needs to happen for more women — across race, class and identity — to feel entitled to their ambitions and supported in the pursuit of them.
