On Monday evening I attended an event to celebrate the publishing of a Harvard Business Review article called, “The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets.” The gist of the article is that in countries where multinationals are looking to grow their businesses (Brazil, Russia, India and China), they need women to do the work, but there are a multitude of factors blocking women from maintaining mid-level manager jobs.
The factors standing in women’s way are elder care, safety, and travel issues. Childcare is either inexpensive or easily accessible, so is actually not as much of an obstacle. What stood out to me was the enormous differences between American women and women from these counties in answering the question, “Am I ambitious?” According to the study, women in BRIC countries feel ambitious at rates of 60% to 90%. In the US, the number is closer to 35%. So, what is going on? Have American women become fundamentally lazy?
I’d like to offer another perspective because I actually feel very ambitious. My sense is that women in these countries are ambitious for private and public sector jobs outside the home. And, because home life is still woven with centuries of tradition (often grandparents will take care of the children, which ensures continuity of cultural norms), the women are not as worried. In the US, women have gone a long way towards parity in the work world. What is suffering however, and what needs much of our ambition and attention, is our quality of life, our daily culture and civilization. In the US we are seeing unprecedented levels of obesity, high levels of anti-depressant use, childhood diseases like ADD, and the list goes on.
So, could it be that women who are deciding it’s just not worth it to give all of our work energy to the office are actually very ambitious for fixing an ailing society? I know that personally I feel like lots of people can replace me at my old job. My greatest ambitions at this point are twofold. The first is to raise resourceful, productive, socially conscious and happy adults. The second is to focus on helping individuals, and eventually corporations, to develop sustainable rhythms for life and work. My mom and dad immigrated from France and Luxembourg, respectively, and enjoyed very nice economic and professional success in the US. But to my mind that success came at a cost. The daily rituals of French life in the food, the connections and the intimacy, were watered down to the point where they really missed it. Now spend more than four months a year in Europe.
I get it. I miss it too. And I believe that its these missing rituals that are creating so much disequilibrium in the US. So, let’s not call us not ambitious…we have a lot of work to do!