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of women at the entry level, but by the time that same pipeline is filling leadership positions, it is
overwhelmingly stocked with men.

There are so many reasons for this winnowing out, but one important contributor is a leadership
ambition gap. Of course, many individual women are as professionally ambitious as any individual
man. Yet drilling down, the data clearly indicate that in field after field, more men than women aspire
to the most senior jobs. A 2012 McKinsey survey of more than four thousand employees of leading
companies found that 36 percent of the men wanted to reach the C-suite, compared to only 18 percent
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of the women. When jobs are described as powerful, challenging, and involving high levels of
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responsibility, they appeal to more men than women. And while the ambition gap is most pronounced
at the highest levels, the underlying dynamic is evident at every step of the career ladder. A survey of
college students found that more men than women chose “reaching a managerial level” as a career
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priority in the first three years after graduating. Even among highly educated professional men and
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women, more men than women describe themselves as “ambitious.”

There is some hope that a shift is starting to occur in the next generation. A 2012 Pew study found
for the first time that among young people ages eighteen to thirty-four, more young women (66
percent) than young men (59 percent) rated “success in a high-paying career or profession” as
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important to their lives. A recent survey of Millennials found that women were just as likely to
describe themselves as ambitious as men. Although this is an improvement, even among this
demographic, the leadership ambition gap remains. Millennial women are less likely than Millennial
men to agree that the statement “I aspire to a leadership role in whatever field I ultimately work”
describes them very well. Millennial women were also less likely than their male peers to characterize
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themselves as “leaders,” “visionaries,” “self-confident,” and “willing to take risks.”

Since more men aim for leadership roles, it is not surprising that they obtain them, especially given §§
all the other obstacles that women have to overcome. This pattern starts long before they enter the
workforce. Author Samantha Ettus and her husband read their daughter’s kindergarten yearbook,
where each child answered the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” They noted
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that several of the boys wanted to be president. None of the girls did. (Current data suggest that when
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these girls become women, they will continue to feel the same way.) In middle school, more boys
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than girls aspire to leadership roles in future careers. At the top fifty colleges, less than a third of
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student government presidents are women.

Professional ambition is expected of men but is optional—or worse, sometimes even a negat