June 30, 2017 • 44 mins
Does a woman’s career ambitions hurt her dating life? Do we down-play our ambitions to attract an opposite-sex partner? E&B break down the surprising science behind the ambition/marriage trade-off.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to stuff mom
never told you. So today I am jazz to talk
through some new research that just came out Brigit that
(00:27):
confirms some of my biggest suspicions around women's ambition and
our love lives that I've been writing about since the
very beginning of my journey with bossed Up. In fact,
one of the first thing that I thought worth mentioning
in this episode was an article I wrote called I'm
Tired of Young Women Downplaying their accomplishments for Role reboot
(00:49):
dot Org. Shout up to them, shout out to that
amazing blog that I used to write for a lot,
all about living life off script, in other words, like
ditching gender roles. And here's the main gist of it,
has to do with our ambition and our achievements and
our dating lives. So I found myself in a predicament
that I wonder if you've ever experienced, or if anyone
(01:11):
listening has, which is I was really into this new
guy that I was dating, and for the first couple
of months, I didn't even really realize that I hadn't
mentioned a lot of my biggest achievements at work I
hadn't really mentioned what I've been doing. At the time,
I was a political digital strategist working on some of
the biggest, hottest Senate campaigns across the country. This was
(01:35):
back and I was working for a super pack, so
I had my hand in every major Senate race in
the country, which is super fun um. At the time,
I had just gotten off of a day in which
I had a huge victory for my client, and when
I met up with him to play some volleyball shout
out to Brad the boo, who has been in the
picture now for quite some time, I found myself accidentally
(01:58):
slipping and reveling in one of my successes from the day.
So I'm like, oh no, I gasped, and like I
looked at him as though he should have been intimidated
by me, which is really egomaniacal like me. But I
was like, does that not intimidate you? Like I shouldn't
even you know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to like
gloat or anything, you know, I like apologized for talking
(02:20):
about my big success at work that day. He turns
to me and says, no, that's hot, and I'm like,
whoa what, like like Recorcord. Yeah, and I'm like, what
do you mean. He's like, I think it's awesome that
you're killing it at work. And what surprised me in
that moment was not just his response but my response
to his response. Okay, I was surprised that I was worried,
(02:44):
and then he was not at all intimidated, Like, why
had I been dating this guy for two months at
the time and hadn't really mentioned how much I loved
what I was doing and how thoud I was what
I was doing at work? Yeah, I mean, do ambitious
women feel like they have to downplay there in their
career ambitions, their career successes in order to get, you know,
(03:05):
get into men. Yeah, and I have to I have
to put out a little disclaimer here by saying this
is a seriously heteronormative situation in that something that research
has found really amongst heterosexual couples that single women, and
now there is finally new research that just came out
(03:26):
this month that women who are single and heterosexual do
in fact self censor around men when they think that
whatever their career ambitions are might be seen or viewed
by their other classmates, including men. So I mean, I
want to dive into that new research which is being
(03:46):
called the ambition marriage trade off. Harvard Business Review put
out an article called the Ambition marriage trade Off too
many single women face, and I feel like there's so
much to sink. Um I think, I mean, I think
it's worth saying that, Like, I'm I can brag on you.
I know that you're a very ambitious, like successful woman.
(04:07):
I admire. This about you is that you're very like
you own your accomplishments, which is something that like, I mean,
I think that's great, right So like, so I I
have a very like kind of complicated feelings about this.
But something I can't stand is like in celebrities is
like false modesty and they're like oh like like yeah,
like I like this is why I hate Kyler Swift
(04:28):
because she always comes out on stage like wow, I
can't believe there's people in the audience right, like and
it's like, well, you're a huge pop star of course, um,
and so I really are. I find it refreshing that
people would like own their accomplishments. And I tend to like, um,
you know, celebrities who are a little bit like braggy,
like I loved Prince. I love people who talk about
(04:48):
how they're they're great, um, and that there's something in that.
I think that like, we're told that you're not supposed
to do that, We're told that you're not supposed to be,
you know, um to braggy, especially as women. And there's
this whole likability leadership trade off that women also faced,
right that the more assertive women are, whether it's in
a boardroom or about their own achievements, the less likable
(05:11):
men and women are to see them or to consider them.
So so let's let's talk about this study because it
really is troubling to me, and I'd love to hear
from our listeners if you find yourself self censoring by
accident or otherwise, or if this is something like me
you used to do a lot and started to mind
(05:33):
fully change. Yeah, because when you describe the way I
am about my achievements now, I think I would agree
I'm pretty unapologetically ambitious. And what it's been challenging, I mean,
I think it's been a little bit of a transition,
um from being someone who I described in that in
that piece, I said, listen, I'm I was a hot
mess like I was and not that there's anything wrong
(05:54):
with that either, But I was not. I was so
busy trying to be demure and coy, but I was
reeling in partners or prospective partners who were into that
coy demure me. And so was it like a bait
and switch where it's like, hey, guess look, guys, I
know you thought I have a super coy, but I'm
actually super not like sto surprised with it. And there's
(06:16):
some there's some problems of that. Yeah, I mean I
have often been told I, um, I like completely compartmentalized
my like work and professional accomplishments. And my great example
is that when I was graduating from college, my parents
didn't know that I had been like selected to give
a like just because I didn't tell them until the
(06:37):
why were you selected to give a speech? Because I
was a very good student and I was a very
well liked student in my class and not an understatement.
I think that might be an understatement. Can you can
you own that achievement? I own that achievement. I was.
I was chosen as our quote outstanding graduated senior, And yeah,
I mean I think the idea. For some reason, I
(06:58):
felt like that was not something I could like tell
my parents. My parents like I just like let them
find out the day of. And I think, like I've
often been accused of sort of umpt mentalizing and not
the word for hiding your um but I think they're like,
you know, I something that. So I like it when
people own their achievements and that their ambition. But there's
(07:20):
nothing I can stand less, And particularly in a town
like DC, And I think this is it's obviously very gendered,
but I think it like spans gender people who are
like really really self promoting. Like I like that's something
that like I encounter often in d C. And it
like makes it like makes my skin cross when someone
is like legitimately ambitious and very proud of what they've done.
(07:41):
I love that, and I feel like I like gravitate
towards that, even though that's not necessarily how I am.
But then I feel like because if you've probably met
the guy in d C who was like talk so
much about all these big things he's doing and like
who he's worked with, and I find that like that
is so the opposite of like my vibe like what
it's genuine and someone is like coming from a place
(08:03):
of like I love what I do, I'm proud of
what I do, and like they're owning it in every
genuine way. I love that. There will always be people
who don't know if you're owning it in a genuine way, though,
And that's a good point. That's the thing. I think
you and I actually differ dramatically approach to this. I'm
not saying in our in our opinion per se, but
like you and I are very different in how we
(08:23):
own our achievements. I think I think that's probably and
I think that will make this conversation even more interesting
because I wasn't always like that, because it was so
much easier to be coy into mirror because you wouldn't
risk being seen as a jerk. Now, I'm like, you
know what far outweighs the amount of people who will
inevitably think I'm a jerk for talking about my achievements
(08:45):
are the people who will then show up in my
life because they want to know more about these achievements,
or you want to partner on something, or you know,
we'll want to invite me to have a podcast to
talk about stuff like Because there are always going to
be people out there that think I'm a jerk, and
I think like what you're saying is so true. Is
that like I feel like it's like you should have
(09:06):
the space to show up as yourself, right, and so
like if Emily is very proud of our accomplishments, like
you should be able to show up in that space,
show up in life as in that way and not
get judged for it. That you're gonna that you're being
a jury, but we know we all will, Like that's
the reality, is that we all will be judged. And
like my take on it is and we're getting way
ahead of ourselves here, but I hope you're I hope
(09:28):
you're still down stay with is like I would much
rather run the risk of some people thinking I'm full
of myself than never to go out there and be
my full self and like be talking about what we're
what we're doing, and because it's cool because you're doing
cool stuff, Like like why should you, like, if you're
someone who loves what you do when you're doing cool stuff,
(09:49):
why should you not be able to like like revel
and pride like like, well you know why, because single
women fear not ever getting because of the page. Yeah right,
And it's the research shows that men today, even today,
men still prefer quote female partners who are less professionally
ambitious than they are. And because of this, single women
(10:10):
face a choice right to potentially take actions that might
lead to professional success, like having a heavy social media
presence about your achievements and all of the stuff you're
doing professionally, which might then be viewed less favorably in
the heterosexual marriage market. You know that this is written
by economists when they talk about dating as being in
(10:32):
the hetero marriage market. Can I dive into this one
study in Okay? So they took a bunch of MBA
program students, which is already a pretty biased sample. It's
acknowledged the sort of privilege that goes into being in
an NBA program and the fact that this is like
maybe the most ambitious professional subset of the population you
might find their like shelling out cash to go to
(10:52):
grad school. Um. So, knowing that sort of asterix here
and the asterix that this is amongst heterosexual people only,
they asked students. You know, they said, here's a career
services survey and they're asking students, men and women, single
and not so single people about their potential desired compensation,
(11:17):
how much travel they would be willing to take on,
how many hours per week they would be willing to
work for an internship that summer. So the guys was,
here's a career services survey that will determine how we
match you with potential internships this summer. The more ambitious
you are, the more likely you will be to be
(11:37):
matched with a high tier you know, whatever consulting firm
that requires a huge amount of dedication and whatever. Like
no work life balance is the underlying assumption here. Um.
The answers for single women changed dramatically when students were
(11:57):
told that they would be just guessing their survey results
as a class. So what happened was when when the
secret was kept, when it was just a survey that
they would turn in privately to the Career Services center, women,
women answered single and not single women answered comparably like
compared to their class dates. But when it came to
(12:20):
like a public response that their classmates would see, including
potential single dudes that were in the dating market, they
quote lowered their desired yearly compensation from a hundred and
thirty one thousand to a hundred and thirteen thousand on average,
and so they're saying, I don't want that much money.
I just want usands get your money, I know, and
(12:44):
then listen to this. They reduced their willingness to travel
from fourteen days per month to seven days per month.
They also reported wanting to work for fewer hours per
week and significantly lower levels of overall all professional ambition,
and said that they had less of a tendency to lead.
(13:05):
Women who were not single didn't change their answers when
they were going to be shown to the whole class
versus private. That is wild. That insane that, I mean,
like I could almost sort of see like the travel thing,
but the money thing. I mean, who doesn't make money?
She doesn't want to threaten the dude. I think that
to me is like it is beyond I mean. And
(13:26):
the researcher said, I'm like reading this, by the way,
in Starburst, star Starbursts. That's where my mind went to Candy.
I'm reading this in Starbucks and I'm literally saying out loud, wow, wow, wow,
after every paragraph. That's a wild study. They indicate that
single women but quote not women in a relationship avoid
actions that could help their careers when those actions have
(13:50):
negative marriage market consequences. Well, so I think I have
to sort of like flesh that out and that I
do think that, like I think that we live in
a society where I think a lot of dudes like
the idea of finding ambitious women attractive thing I have
encountered a lot personally. Um, but but actually liking ambitious
(14:13):
women is a different thing, right. It means like maybe
you'd have to cook dinner like on the Red and
like do like and and you know, maybe your your
partner's career would like be you know, the most important
thing for her for a while, or like maybe like
she would be calling for a while, right, Like Yeah,
I mean I like, I guess I mean I'm an
ambitious person. I I spent almost a month in Australia
(14:34):
just for service of my career, and you know, I
was super excited to have that opportunity, Like I definitely have.
I I would probably say my career is probably the
most important thing to me in my life. Um, and
so I'm certainly ambitious. But I do wonder if I
if I have sort of like I'm like working in
this working out my like entire theory around talking about
(14:54):
your ambitions on this show, so pardon me, Um, but yeah,
part of me wonders if I if I do sort
of like shy away from talking about my ambitions because
I worry you know, around the guy. Yeah, around the guys. Yeah.
I mean I certainly did, and I caught myself doing so.
And the question for me that also comes up, I
have so many questions for this is at what point
(15:17):
in a relationship does this switch flip right where you
reveal yourself the heck Like they say single women hide
their ambition, which research backs up, but married women don't.
It's not marriage to me, Like, it can't be marriage
because we know that marriage is like means really different
things to really get people. Some people don't even ever
want to get Some people like me have extremely ambivalent
(15:38):
feelings about marriage. All the time that I've been working
through that, we need to do a whole other podcasts.
But um, like, at what point in a partnership do
you stop having that result show up? Like four months
into dating, six months into dating, two years into dating.
I asked Brad the Boo what he thought about this
research because I stumbled upon it, um while I was
(16:00):
it was it just came out when I was with
him in the same room, and I read this study
and I'm just freaking out, and I said, well, you know,
what do you have to say about people who are
men who are intimidated by women's ambition? And we talked
about the whole article that I had written four years
ago now, and he said, that's only true for men
or people. He said, that's only true for people who
(16:21):
don't see their partnership as a team effort. I think
that's so wise and so true, right, Like, if you
if you don't see your partnership as like an equitable team,
like you're like, just like a teammate, you want your
teammate to get more money, right, like you want their
victory is your victory, right. I completely agree, and I
think not to get too personal, but you know, I
(16:42):
had a situation where someone like a romantic partner in
my life was, you know, we had to sort of
come to grips with the fact that he was, like,
I find myself attracted to someone else because that person
is not as like career focused and is not as successful.
And that's frankly, that's not something that it was an
(17:03):
isolated thing like that's I've been said, been told that
multiple times from romantic partners where and again I think
it's like they think they like, they like the idea
of the version of themselves that wants to be with
like a badass career woman, but actually that that version
of themselves is like them believing the best, you know,
like in their perfect mind, if they're this like great person,
(17:26):
it's yeah, it's exactly what I'm looking for. It's aspirational, right,
But in reality, perhaps that's not what they actually want.
And I think like whatever you like, you know, whatever
you want is fine, like and you shouldn't you shouldn't
be if it's if you don't actually want what comes
with dating someone who is very ambitious and career focused,
(17:47):
which means yeah, making a meal every now and then
cleaning up, you know, being the person who does a
lot of the domestic tasks, like being alone while that
person is traveling for work or like you know, making
yourself like like being off on your own with that
person is like doing work. Yeah, like being okay with
that and actually not just being okay with that, but
like understanding that like that is part of you know,
(18:11):
of your team, like but like not being salty about
and of course, like everyone gets salty when it's like,
you know, I think you can get grumpy about it sometimes,
but like not like being willing to take pride in
that because it reflects well on your relationship and like
you're better when you're you know, teammate is doing well. Yeah,
it's it is personal. I mean, I think that this
is a struggle that so many of us are dealing with,
(18:34):
and I want to talk this through and so many
other levels, but we have to take a breg stick around.
There is way more nuanced to this research. We will
unpack and walk through together in just a few moments,
But first a word from our sponsors and we're back.
(18:54):
And this is kind of an emotional episode for both
of us. It's very personal. So it's so directly related
to the trade offs that I think all of us
are navigating right now. Um, but hello, I would love
to hear from lesbian women if this is so not
an issue like in the LGBT community. I would love
(19:16):
to see what we can learn from folks who don't
have all this baggage around gender roles, because you know,
being in the marriage market, being you know, being dating,
being a person who's dating can feel like a very
vulnerable experience. And we're told from all the research on
shame and vulnerability by the way, shout out to burn
a Brown, that like, the best way to actually find
(19:38):
someone who loves you for being you is you have
to dare to let yourself be seen who you actually
how you actually want to show up in the world,
and not adapt and like hide your ambition while you're
in that dating pool. But then what this is saying
is that sorry, ladies, like because men still need to
feel like men, and being a man in our society
(20:00):
still means being a breadwinner, even though that's not necessarily
the kind of strict gender roles that any of us
want to adhere to, that it definitely those messages are internalized,
and the result is we hide, we hid our ambition.
Here in the HBr study, they did another a couple
of series is of of experiments that showed that when
(20:21):
placed in an all female group, those same NBA students
were way more likely to report that they would prefer
a high paying, high demand job. Sixty percent of single
women reported that, whereas when placed with male peers that
number dropped to forty two. So all like sixty percent
of these single ambitious women a certain number of like
(20:44):
what twenty something percent of them said actually no things
when they were surrounded by men. And so I mean
in all female groups, single women, the same sort of research,
I should say, showed up. The same kind of results
showed up when it comes to a job with a
quicker promotion and to partner partner track um, substantial travel,
all of those trade offs were like reminded of our
(21:08):
risk of being seen as a not so dedicated girlfriend,
not so dedicated parents, spouse, whatever. When we're just around men,
we dim our ambition, messed up. That's that's so awful.
And like, I you know, I'm I'm I'm thinking back
to when I was in high school. I went to
all girl high school, and like, you know, I I
(21:28):
we should do an entire episode around around now like that. Yeah,
but I mean I definitely felt like in high school
because it was just women, you never never even occurred
to me to like like it just was a different world. Like, so,
you know, they do study performing, they do studies where
it's like, oh, when women are around, when young women
are educated around young men, they demure more. They don't
(21:49):
want to answer questions because they you know, they participate less.
They don't want to be seen as bossy. And you
know it's funny is that that was the third experiment
that they did in this stuff, even among MBA students,
so we're not talking in high school, a breed school.
They conducted a student survey and analysis on participation grades
because in the NBA program class participation, yeah, it's a
(22:09):
big part of it. And so what they did was, um,
they found that and this is self reported. To take
all this stuff with a grand of saw because we
know self reported data is not always the best. But
they asked their NBA students, the same ones that they've
been um putting in this Career Center experiment, to see
if that they had avoided certain actions that they thought
(22:31):
would help their careers because they were concerned it would
make them look quote too ambitious, assertive, or pushy. Sixty
percent of single females said that they had avoided asking
for a raise or promotion for that reason. So there's
a lot of self awareness on the censorship Compared to
thirty nine percent of women who were married or in
(22:51):
a serious relationship and only twenty seven percent of men,
So sixty four percent of single women compared to thirty
nine percent of women in committed relationship, So over half
of the single women reported avoiding speaking up in meetings,
compared to about thirty of women who weren't single or men. Wow,
(23:12):
so really, I mean just like I mean, like I
I always connect with this, but like the patriarchy man
like it's like we smash it, smash it. Yeah, well
that's the thing. Doesn't this make you want to pull
your hair out? It makes me? It's this is this
is infuriating, and like like I said earlier, I mean
it's such a personal as women, as working women who
are you know, ambitious and pretty career focused. Like it's infuriating,
(23:34):
and I like, even just in this conversation, I'm like,
I think taking note of all of the ways that
has shown up in my personal life. It's it makes
me want to scream, Like and part of me wonders,
like is this going to as a you know, unmarried woman,
is this is what's going to be something that I
am dealing with my for my whole life, Like it's
just just gonna be my you know life is trying
(23:57):
to navigate success in a field that I care about
so much and love so much, but also having to
be mindful of like, well, do you want to get
married someday? Do you want a man to like think
you're attractive? Do you want a man to like think
that you're marriage material or like datable or whatever. And
it's like, I mean, the more I mean, this is
the whole other podcast episode. But the more I think
(24:17):
about this, there's a really great article about making the
choice to be single forever by this great writer Laurie Penny.
Shout out to her. But I always go back to
that where sometimes I think, and this sounds so like
gloom and doom. And I swear I'm a cheery person,
but like sometimes I think that the best option is
like just to be like I'm never getting married, I'm
never going to date. I'm just going to like perp
(24:39):
like intentionally live a single life the way that like
plenty of like writers and artists have done since forever,
and like making that choice because part of me is
like it is not worth the headache to have to
deal with navigating this mind field of like you can't
if you want to like have a partner, you can't
be your full self and like you can't be And
I also think they're like people don't understand what it's
(24:59):
like to be ach, ambitious or creative woman. People think
that like you're you know, if you have ambitions or
you're creative or whatever, that you're gonna get married and
have a kid and those are gonna fall by the wayside,
And like we totally allow men to show up in
that way that like, you know, your career or your
passion or whatever is a big part of your life,
and we don't afford that to women at all, or
(25:21):
at least we have an historically correct because it's where
I'm optimistic. This is where I'm optimistic. First of all,
I have been long obsessed with the happiness research around
being signal or being with someone. And I'm not saying
this is the reason anyone should ever get married. But connection, connection,
I think is why we're all here. Like at the
end of the day, I think human connection is a
(25:42):
humongous part of living a happy, healthy and successful life.
I put that in your cred But we shouldn't have
to sacrifice our art. Our careers are focused your passionate
our passions to do that right. I think it's about
finding the right kind of person and maybe at different
times in our lives, having the ability to communicate and
compromise mindfully or not or choose like this has been
(26:06):
a good ride, but like I'm not about monogamy, you
know what I mean, Like this has been a good ride,
but it's time to move on to the next, you know,
Like this is the question. I think one of the
answers that I've come across is, and this is a
core principle at bossed Up, is that we have to
treat our personal lives as important as our professional lives.
We have to see them together. We can't we I
think the compartmentalization can sometimes hurt our cause. And one
(26:30):
of the pieces of advice that they put together is
saying that there might be a place for grad schools,
like there might be a place for MBA programs or
college to help students think holistically about their ambitions personally
and professionally. That's basically the kind of safe space we've
created at Boston and say, hey, here's a radical concept.
(26:51):
Come bring your personal goals into the same piece of paper,
into the same weekend, in the same consideration as your
professional goals, and talk about them that way with the
people in your life. Yeah, I mean, and then like
I keep going back to myself because this is something
I deal with. It's it's a completely personal thing. But
like I am someone who like I can very clearly
see it in my life and how it's played out.
(27:13):
I can partmentalize the hell out of my my professional life,
like I I mean, for the longest time, if there
was any kind of overlap between personal and professional, like
I was so schemed out by that, like was not
something that I I I am, like I like, and
I think that part of it is because the work
that I've done, it's so it's social and like you're
(27:36):
talking about like don't date in the political world that yeah,
well that and other things. I mean, my work basically
for the longest time it's been around, you know, it's
been very outreach focused and like making friends with lots
of people, going out with lots of people, and making
people feel good about our like it's a relationship building
and like that can it can be super confusing, Like
having that be a big basis of your promotional work
(27:59):
can be very confused, using alongside like friendships and like
romantic relationships. And so for me, I just have to
have them completely distinct where it's like these are my
like coworkers and I love them dearly and they're so great.
But then but those are very different than my like
you know, professional and personal and family and so like, yeah,
well I think there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, but
(28:20):
I think that it can it can go. I think
that it does has not afforded me the ability to
like show up as my full my full self in
all the spaces you know, it's like I can't you know,
I like would be very if I went to a
professional development space and someone was like, so tell me
about your family ambitions, I would be like wawa, which
I'm not advocat ever either though to be clear, like
(28:43):
they can't legally do that if all that stuff. But
like I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to
say here. What I found helpful is bringing my work
to my dating life and making sure that my personal
priorities are integrated into my work choices to make sense
personal and again it's it's holistic. It sounds like yeah,
(29:05):
where it's like and I think, I mean, I've had
work situations where like they your your boss doesn't almost
does not expect you to be a person like you're
a robot and so like if you like or whatever,
it's like you're not able to show up as the
you know, individuals that we are with family responsibilities, friend responsibilities,
romantic responsibilities, and don't pretend to yourself like you can
(29:28):
check all of that back exactly exactly, and I think work,
I mean like bringing it back to your favorite thing,
which is like professional development work scenarios where they afford
for like you know that we're all people that you
know maybe one day, Yeah, we're I think it's great.
I think so too. All right, let's take a quick
break and collect our thoughts and take take the temperature
(29:48):
in here for a second, and we will be right
back with more sort of conclusions that these researchers came to,
and frankly, a whole lot more questions for you, because
we don't have this all figured out and I'd love
to hear what you have to say. So we'll be
right back after this quick break, and we're back, and
(30:12):
this is a big burly topic, So thanks for hanging
in there with us, listeners, slash. We're not sorry, because
I hope that the sort of the pain and challenge
of weeding through this stuff is like resonating because I
think we're all trying to figure this out if we
have any semblance of wanting to have ambition peacefully coexist
(30:34):
with love. That is what I've been writing about, by
the way, since high school and college. Like my my college,
what you might call a thesis, which was just a
really long paper, wasn't technically a thesis, was on gender
equality and romantic love amongst heterosexual couples. So that's like
bringing it back home for you of your writing and research,
like we could have a whole like podcast about the
(30:55):
philosophies behind romantic love and behind gender equality. And sadly,
that paper ended with there are no solutions. That's also
that paper ended with like they are fundamentally incongruent. But
here's here's the thing, right, let's look at the research
that we're we've been unpacking. All of these studies show
that women do, in fact censor their ambition, downplay their
(31:17):
ambition when they are single, and believe that it might
hurt their dating prospects. So two things they're One is
that we need to be able to make that choice
mindfully and not unconsciously. So if that's you know, if
you want to I think the burnet brown stuff also
comes back to the fact that if you if you
bring that shame into your dating life, you're going to
(31:38):
attract people who are attracted to a false version of you. Yes,
and that's I mean, that's never good for anything. I
used to sort of be the kind of girl who
would like pretend to be really into like sports and
like whatever other dumb stuff guys like, and then when
they like, you would know that you're not. Now it's like,
I mean, I have, I have, I'm kind of like
learning as I go, and that like, I don't want
(31:59):
to pretend to be the kind of person who enjoy
stuff that I don't enjoy. And then you know, and
then later like be like, oh, actually I hate this,
and it's not fair to anybody. It's not fair to
me or to the person that I'm doing. Okay, And
the third thing here is that to keep in mind
that there are we're all bringing the context of antiquated
(32:22):
but sticking gender roles with us to these conversations. So
there are many ways in which we unconsciously, unconsciously have
internalized what it means to be a good woman and
being a non threatening, sweet, non ambitious person was wrapped
up in all that baggage that both men and women
are still dealing with in terms of the proclaimed man
(32:43):
who wants an ambitious woman but struggles with the fact
that that comes with a lot of stuff that he
might not have bargained for. I think we're still figuring
that stuff out, and like there's just I think it's
a lifetime of of what the research really comes to say,
which is open and honest conversation. I think it always
comes back to that, and I think, like you know,
(33:05):
it's I often say this on the show, but like
gender is like a mine field sometimes and it's it's
often difficult to see the ways that it shows up
in our personal lives, but it does. And it's like
our part of the whole trip of the patriarchy is
that we're all kind of unlearning it and unpacking it
together as we and like we don't we don't know
how it's going to show up, and even the most
(33:25):
like woke with it progressive couple, it's I mean, these
things are in grained, like it's they've been in grain
for so long that of course we can't escape them
even if we would like to write. And so having
conversations that are not just about your likes and dislikes
like do you like long walks on the beach with
painted gladas? Yeah, but also your career ambitions and expectations
(33:47):
about mutual support, What does that actually look like? How
does that change over time? And continue to have those conversations.
And that actually came out from another study that I
think is worth mentioning here, albeit briefly. Um, that shows
what happens a little further on down the life cycle
of this problem. So the initial problem we talked about
(34:08):
is women downplaying our ambition during the dating season of
life here um or at least dating season one, right
for whatever that should be a Netflix show, dating season one. Uh.
So here's what happens next. And I I really hate
to be the bearer of bad news on this, but
there's a research that found that women with high status
(34:31):
careers in particular more demanding career paths than their husbands.
So again, this is super heteronormative um lead to women,
those women being indeed more likely to experience feelings of
resentfulness or embarrassment, feeling that their status was somehow decreased
(34:53):
by their husband's lower status position, which has obviously a
negative impact on marital happiness US and an increased likelihood
of divorce. So whoa nelly. Okay, So here's what we've
done here. We've downplayed our ambition. We've reeled in a match. Okay,
we get married, then your career maybe takes off or
(35:14):
you have a lot of ambition, you get that highest
status career that you've been driving for your whole life,
and now you resent your husband as a result of that.
And I mean, it's like a recipe for an unhappy marriage.
And this is all because of gender roles, right, Like
it's a it's a recipe for not for like resentment
and bitterness. And then like I don't think this is
(35:36):
this is in the research, but like if you have
a kid in the mix, like it's just like the
idea of like, oh mom resents dad because because the
patriarchy forced gender roles, forced her to like be a
version of herself that she wasn't to attract him. Like
that's and there is there's one silver lining in this research.
There is a solution, a cure. The cure to not
(35:59):
having a resentful, high octane woman driving the career of
the family is when husbands provide or at least their
wives felt that their husbands provide high levels of instrumental support,
such as helping with domestic responsibilities or child and elder care.
Then in that case, like having a higher status career
(36:21):
than your husband doesn't negatively impact your marital happiness, right,
And I think that's I mean that that makes so
much sense to me because women just want I mean,
like we don't want to feel supported, right, and we
want to feel like meaningfully supported and like tangibly. Yeah yeah,
where it's like you like, and this is I think
goes back to the analogy that you talked about with Brad,
where it's like, if you're a team, if one member
(36:42):
of the team is like killing it and like you know,
doing all of doing all the things, the other member
of the team is finding a way to also manfully
contribute to the team. And it's like even if even
if you know you're not to go with the shouldn't
be making sports analogies, but I'll try to. If you're
the like pitch hitter, like the number the stars escapes
(37:02):
my getting all out there, but like if you're the
star player on the team whatever, that like even if
you're like kind of on the bench as the power manager,
you're still finding a way to support, right, Like, you're
still part of the same team. I shouldn't beautiful. But
also I think it's I mean, I have some weird
feelings about this because I like to think that I'm
(37:24):
motivated to contribute to my partnership, right think, there's definitely
this desire to make someone as happy as they've made
you or whatever that whatever you might want to call that.
Um that like, desire to contribute to the team as
a win, like whatever that win looks like. But would
we ever say this to women, Like, look at this research.
(37:44):
This research says, like, let's just sub about men for
women here for a second. The research basically says, if
we were to reverse the words men and women here,
it would say men in higher status careers resent their
wives unless their wives pitching tangibly at home. And so
I just find I mean, that would not be politically correct.
(38:06):
So this study kind of rubs me the wrong way.
Is like contribute, duh. Everybody wants to feel supported emotionally
and very practically when it comes to the care duties
of the work of unpaid labor. That goes into homemaking
and child rearing and elder care and all that stuff
that's unaccounted for in our economy, um and contributing to
(38:31):
the bottom line of the family budget. Right yeah, I
mean there you don't have to, like, there are other
ways to contribute to a domestic partnership than breadwinning, right, Like,
and I do think this is a whole other episode,
but like, like the domestic labor has been because it's
associated with women. I think that's why we valuate so
like childcare, elder care, domestic things that business. Actually, Amory
(38:54):
Slaughter wrote a book called Unfinished Business about that exact problem.
Justin Caroline did an episode shout out to them, because
I mean it's it's so true, Like, and I think
that we we downplay that, but it's so important. And
it's like if you how are you able to go
out and do wage earning work if someone is not
either you're paying for like a maide or a clip
to come do things where someone in your household is
(39:14):
doing that exactly. Sigh. It is a troubling one. It's
it calls into question, like, well, what the hell are
we supposed to do about it? Right, Like, as single
women who are potentially in the dating pool. Like we've
already talked through some of our coping mechanisms, but can
we also talk about what men can do? Yes, one
(39:37):
clean up around the house, but yeah, please do pitch
in equally. We're getting closer, but women, According to the
Washington Post last year, women are still doing twice the
amount of housework and child care duties in households and
which men and women both work full time. So let
that sink in for a second. And I also think,
like I hate the societal thing of like, oh, like
do you ever see those memes on social media that
(39:58):
are like, um, if a woman does cook, like she's not.
It's like like learn how to Like we should be
teaching both boys and girls at an early age how
to take care of yourself, how to cook, how to
clean injury, all of that, Like this idea that like
it's a woman's job to come in and like do that.
Like that's not cute, that's not good. So I think
(40:18):
to hammer it to sort of bring this baby home here.
I think we want to make conscious choices about being
clear with ourselves and our loved ones about our ambition
professionally knowing that you don't have to be super crazy ambitious.
You don't have to want to travel all the time
for work, You don't have to want to seek out
(40:39):
a high paying job. But if you do, maybe don't
suppress that desire, especially while you're in the dating markets
and accounting for the unconscious habit that has now been
proven that women tend to shy away from being clear
about their ambition professionally around single men, Like is that
a thing that you're experiencing if you're not in the
(41:00):
dating pool, if you're not looking to get married, if
you're not attracting a male partner, like I don't know, tbd,
Like I would love more research on this. I think
the researchers actually ended that study by saying, we need
to test inhibiting factors. We need to test um how
women can deal with this, and we also need men
to check that unconscious bias against ambitious women, Like we
(41:22):
need you to be down with ambitious women and be
down with what actually comes with ambitious women, or at
the very least, don't have that cognitive dissonance between say
you want what you actually want totally just like I mean,
I keep saying this, but like show up as your
authentic self, right, like if you if you just scary,
it is scary, and it's and it's a chat. We
(41:43):
have to sort of like what you were saying at
the beginning of the show of unlearning, like challenging yourself
to unlearn being demeure about your accomplishments. I think we
all have to agree challenge ourselves to show up and
the way that we need to to make to make
this make this thing work. Yeah, because the people that
become unattracked did to you when you're being your unapologetically
ambitious self are people that you would rather weed out. Yeah,
(42:06):
you don't want that, you don't need anyway, ding ding ding.
I think that is a secret happiness. I also think,
you know, we could do a whole episode on this
around Burnet Brown's research and a lot of the social
work that's been done from the sociological perspective on shame
and why we why it is scary to show up
as your authentic self. Um, but we were. We want
(42:28):
to hear from you, I mean girls, we need to
hear from you. We need from you folks who are
not folks. This is again a very heateronormative episode. We
want to hear how other kinds of couples are doing it.
I have a feeling that gay couples have figured this out,
I really do, Like I think I have a feeling
that when you've already bucked all of the gender normative,
(42:49):
heteronormative gender roles that come with relationships, I have a
feeling that the gays will lead the way on this.
So please tell us. Tell us what this experience has
been like for you, because clearly we're still struggling with it. Um,
and tell us about if you're a man listening to this,
tell us what it's been like to unlearn some of
(43:10):
the unconscious habits at or feelings that you might have
or attitudes that you might have been taught to feel
about having a high octane woman on your arm? Like,
what does it look like to have a girlfriend whose
career is crushing it? Um? Do you feel threatened? Women?
Do you feel threatening? Like I sometimes do or did
and now I don't care that I do, but you know, like,
(43:31):
how do you how do you get over that? Yeah?
Please please write if we want to hear it all,
please write. It's clearly something that we're like struggling with
in real time. So we can work through this together. Yeah.
Please don't hesitate to drop us a line on Instagram
at stuff mom Never Told You, on Twitter at mom
Stuff podcast, and get in our inbox at mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com. One four
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to stuff mom
never told you. So today I am jazz to talk
through some new research that just came out Brigit that
(00:27):
confirms some of my biggest suspicions around women's ambition and
our love lives that I've been writing about since the
very beginning of my journey with bossed Up. In fact,
one of the first thing that I thought worth mentioning
in this episode was an article I wrote called I'm
Tired of Young Women Downplaying their accomplishments for Role reboot
(00:49):
dot Org. Shout up to them, shout out to that
amazing blog that I used to write for a lot,
all about living life off script, in other words, like
ditching gender roles. And here's the main gist of it,
has to do with our ambition and our achievements and
our dating lives. So I found myself in a predicament
that I wonder if you've ever experienced, or if anyone
(01:11):
listening has, which is I was really into this new
guy that I was dating, and for the first couple
of months, I didn't even really realize that I hadn't
mentioned a lot of my biggest achievements at work I
hadn't really mentioned what I've been doing. At the time,
I was a political digital strategist working on some of
the biggest, hottest Senate campaigns across the country. This was
(01:35):
back and I was working for a super pack, so
I had my hand in every major Senate race in
the country, which is super fun um. At the time,
I had just gotten off of a day in which
I had a huge victory for my client, and when
I met up with him to play some volleyball shout
out to Brad the boo, who has been in the
picture now for quite some time, I found myself accidentally
(01:58):
slipping and reveling in one of my successes from the day.
So I'm like, oh no, I gasped, and like I
looked at him as though he should have been intimidated
by me, which is really egomaniacal like me. But I
was like, does that not intimidate you? Like I shouldn't
even you know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to like
gloat or anything, you know, I like apologized for talking
(02:20):
about my big success at work that day. He turns
to me and says, no, that's hot, and I'm like,
whoa what, like like Recorcord. Yeah, and I'm like, what
do you mean. He's like, I think it's awesome that
you're killing it at work. And what surprised me in
that moment was not just his response but my response
to his response. Okay, I was surprised that I was worried,
(02:44):
and then he was not at all intimidated, Like, why
had I been dating this guy for two months at
the time and hadn't really mentioned how much I loved
what I was doing and how thoud I was what
I was doing at work? Yeah, I mean, do ambitious
women feel like they have to downplay there in their
career ambitions, their career successes in order to get, you know,
(03:05):
get into men. Yeah, and I have to I have
to put out a little disclaimer here by saying this
is a seriously heteronormative situation in that something that research
has found really amongst heterosexual couples that single women, and
now there is finally new research that just came out
(03:26):
this month that women who are single and heterosexual do
in fact self censor around men when they think that
whatever their career ambitions are might be seen or viewed
by their other classmates, including men. So I mean, I
want to dive into that new research which is being
(03:46):
called the ambition marriage trade off. Harvard Business Review put
out an article called the Ambition marriage trade Off too
many single women face, and I feel like there's so
much to sink. Um I think, I mean, I think
it's worth saying that, Like, I'm I can brag on you.
I know that you're a very ambitious, like successful woman.
(04:07):
I admire. This about you is that you're very like
you own your accomplishments, which is something that like, I mean,
I think that's great, right So like, so I I
have a very like kind of complicated feelings about this.
But something I can't stand is like in celebrities is
like false modesty and they're like oh like like yeah,
like I like this is why I hate Kyler Swift
(04:28):
because she always comes out on stage like wow, I
can't believe there's people in the audience right, like and
it's like, well, you're a huge pop star of course, um,
and so I really are. I find it refreshing that
people would like own their accomplishments. And I tend to like, um,
you know, celebrities who are a little bit like braggy,
like I loved Prince. I love people who talk about
(04:48):
how they're they're great, um, and that there's something in that.
I think that like, we're told that you're not supposed
to do that, We're told that you're not supposed to be,
you know, um to braggy, especially as women. And there's
this whole likability leadership trade off that women also faced,
right that the more assertive women are, whether it's in
a boardroom or about their own achievements, the less likable
(05:11):
men and women are to see them or to consider them.
So so let's let's talk about this study because it
really is troubling to me, and I'd love to hear
from our listeners if you find yourself self censoring by
accident or otherwise, or if this is something like me
you used to do a lot and started to mind
(05:33):
fully change. Yeah, because when you describe the way I
am about my achievements now, I think I would agree
I'm pretty unapologetically ambitious. And what it's been challenging, I mean,
I think it's been a little bit of a transition,
um from being someone who I described in that in
that piece, I said, listen, I'm I was a hot
mess like I was and not that there's anything wrong
(05:54):
with that either, But I was not. I was so
busy trying to be demure and coy, but I was
reeling in partners or prospective partners who were into that
coy demure me. And so was it like a bait
and switch where it's like, hey, guess look, guys, I
know you thought I have a super coy, but I'm
actually super not like sto surprised with it. And there's
(06:16):
some there's some problems of that. Yeah, I mean I
have often been told I, um, I like completely compartmentalized
my like work and professional accomplishments. And my great example
is that when I was graduating from college, my parents
didn't know that I had been like selected to give
a like just because I didn't tell them until the
(06:37):
why were you selected to give a speech? Because I
was a very good student and I was a very
well liked student in my class and not an understatement.
I think that might be an understatement. Can you can
you own that achievement? I own that achievement. I was.
I was chosen as our quote outstanding graduated senior, And yeah,
I mean I think the idea. For some reason, I
(06:58):
felt like that was not something I could like tell
my parents. My parents like I just like let them
find out the day of. And I think, like I've
often been accused of sort of umpt mentalizing and not
the word for hiding your um but I think they're like,
you know, I something that. So I like it when
people own their achievements and that their ambition. But there's
(07:20):
nothing I can stand less, And particularly in a town
like DC, And I think this is it's obviously very gendered,
but I think it like spans gender people who are
like really really self promoting. Like I like that's something
that like I encounter often in d C. And it
like makes it like makes my skin cross when someone
is like legitimately ambitious and very proud of what they've done.
(07:41):
I love that, and I feel like I like gravitate
towards that, even though that's not necessarily how I am.
But then I feel like because if you've probably met
the guy in d C who was like talk so
much about all these big things he's doing and like
who he's worked with, and I find that like that
is so the opposite of like my vibe like what
it's genuine and someone is like coming from a place
(08:03):
of like I love what I do, I'm proud of
what I do, and like they're owning it in every
genuine way. I love that. There will always be people
who don't know if you're owning it in a genuine way, though,
And that's a good point. That's the thing. I think
you and I actually differ dramatically approach to this. I'm
not saying in our in our opinion per se, but
like you and I are very different in how we
(08:23):
own our achievements. I think I think that's probably and
I think that will make this conversation even more interesting
because I wasn't always like that, because it was so
much easier to be coy into mirror because you wouldn't
risk being seen as a jerk. Now, I'm like, you
know what far outweighs the amount of people who will
inevitably think I'm a jerk for talking about my achievements
(08:45):
are the people who will then show up in my
life because they want to know more about these achievements,
or you want to partner on something, or you know,
we'll want to invite me to have a podcast to
talk about stuff like Because there are always going to
be people out there that think I'm a jerk, and
I think like what you're saying is so true. Is
that like I feel like it's like you should have
(09:06):
the space to show up as yourself, right, and so
like if Emily is very proud of our accomplishments, like
you should be able to show up in that space,
show up in life as in that way and not
get judged for it. That you're gonna that you're being
a jury, but we know we all will, Like that's
the reality, is that we all will be judged. And
like my take on it is and we're getting way
ahead of ourselves here, but I hope you're I hope
(09:28):
you're still down stay with is like I would much
rather run the risk of some people thinking I'm full
of myself than never to go out there and be
my full self and like be talking about what we're
what we're doing, and because it's cool because you're doing
cool stuff, Like like why should you, like, if you're
someone who loves what you do when you're doing cool stuff,
(09:49):
why should you not be able to like like revel
and pride like like, well you know why, because single
women fear not ever getting because of the page. Yeah right,
And it's the research shows that men today, even today,
men still prefer quote female partners who are less professionally
ambitious than they are. And because of this, single women
(10:10):
face a choice right to potentially take actions that might
lead to professional success, like having a heavy social media
presence about your achievements and all of the stuff you're
doing professionally, which might then be viewed less favorably in
the heterosexual marriage market. You know that this is written
by economists when they talk about dating as being in
(10:32):
the hetero marriage market. Can I dive into this one
study in Okay? So they took a bunch of MBA
program students, which is already a pretty biased sample. It's
acknowledged the sort of privilege that goes into being in
an NBA program and the fact that this is like
maybe the most ambitious professional subset of the population you
might find their like shelling out cash to go to
(10:52):
grad school. Um. So, knowing that sort of asterix here
and the asterix that this is amongst heterosexual people only,
they asked students. You know, they said, here's a career
services survey and they're asking students, men and women, single
and not so single people about their potential desired compensation,
(11:17):
how much travel they would be willing to take on,
how many hours per week they would be willing to
work for an internship that summer. So the guys was,
here's a career services survey that will determine how we
match you with potential internships this summer. The more ambitious
you are, the more likely you will be to be
(11:37):
matched with a high tier you know, whatever consulting firm
that requires a huge amount of dedication and whatever. Like
no work life balance is the underlying assumption here. Um.
The answers for single women changed dramatically when students were
(11:57):
told that they would be just guessing their survey results
as a class. So what happened was when when the
secret was kept, when it was just a survey that
they would turn in privately to the Career Services center, women,
women answered single and not single women answered comparably like
compared to their class dates. But when it came to
(12:20):
like a public response that their classmates would see, including
potential single dudes that were in the dating market, they
quote lowered their desired yearly compensation from a hundred and
thirty one thousand to a hundred and thirteen thousand on average,
and so they're saying, I don't want that much money.
I just want usands get your money, I know, and
(12:44):
then listen to this. They reduced their willingness to travel
from fourteen days per month to seven days per month.
They also reported wanting to work for fewer hours per
week and significantly lower levels of overall all professional ambition,
and said that they had less of a tendency to lead.
(13:05):
Women who were not single didn't change their answers when
they were going to be shown to the whole class
versus private. That is wild. That insane that, I mean,
like I could almost sort of see like the travel thing,
but the money thing. I mean, who doesn't make money?
She doesn't want to threaten the dude. I think that
to me is like it is beyond I mean. And
(13:26):
the researcher said, I'm like reading this, by the way,
in Starburst, star Starbursts. That's where my mind went to Candy.
I'm reading this in Starbucks and I'm literally saying out loud, wow, wow, wow,
after every paragraph. That's a wild study. They indicate that
single women but quote not women in a relationship avoid
actions that could help their careers when those actions have
(13:50):
negative marriage market consequences. Well, so I think I have
to sort of like flesh that out and that I
do think that, like I think that we live in
a society where I think a lot of dudes like
the idea of finding ambitious women attractive thing I have
encountered a lot personally. Um, but but actually liking ambitious
(14:13):
women is a different thing, right. It means like maybe
you'd have to cook dinner like on the Red and
like do like and and you know, maybe your your
partner's career would like be you know, the most important
thing for her for a while, or like maybe like
she would be calling for a while, right, Like Yeah,
I mean I like, I guess I mean I'm an
ambitious person. I I spent almost a month in Australia
(14:34):
just for service of my career, and you know, I
was super excited to have that opportunity, Like I definitely have.
I I would probably say my career is probably the
most important thing to me in my life. Um, and
so I'm certainly ambitious. But I do wonder if I
if I have sort of like I'm like working in
this working out my like entire theory around talking about
(14:54):
your ambitions on this show, so pardon me, Um, but yeah,
part of me wonders if I if I do sort
of like shy away from talking about my ambitions because
I worry you know, around the guy. Yeah, around the guys. Yeah.
I mean I certainly did, and I caught myself doing so.
And the question for me that also comes up, I
have so many questions for this is at what point
(15:17):
in a relationship does this switch flip right where you
reveal yourself the heck Like they say single women hide
their ambition, which research backs up, but married women don't.
It's not marriage to me, Like, it can't be marriage
because we know that marriage is like means really different
things to really get people. Some people don't even ever
want to get Some people like me have extremely ambivalent
(15:38):
feelings about marriage. All the time that I've been working
through that, we need to do a whole other podcasts.
But um, like, at what point in a partnership do
you stop having that result show up? Like four months
into dating, six months into dating, two years into dating.
I asked Brad the Boo what he thought about this
research because I stumbled upon it, um while I was
(16:00):
it was it just came out when I was with
him in the same room, and I read this study
and I'm just freaking out, and I said, well, you know,
what do you have to say about people who are
men who are intimidated by women's ambition? And we talked
about the whole article that I had written four years
ago now, and he said, that's only true for men
or people. He said, that's only true for people who
(16:21):
don't see their partnership as a team effort. I think
that's so wise and so true, right, Like, if you
if you don't see your partnership as like an equitable team,
like you're like, just like a teammate, you want your
teammate to get more money, right, like you want their
victory is your victory, right. I completely agree, and I
think not to get too personal, but you know, I
(16:42):
had a situation where someone like a romantic partner in
my life was, you know, we had to sort of
come to grips with the fact that he was, like,
I find myself attracted to someone else because that person
is not as like career focused and is not as successful.
And that's frankly, that's not something that it was an
(17:03):
isolated thing like that's I've been said, been told that
multiple times from romantic partners where and again I think
it's like they think they like, they like the idea
of the version of themselves that wants to be with
like a badass career woman, but actually that that version
of themselves is like them believing the best, you know,
like in their perfect mind, if they're this like great person,
(17:26):
it's yeah, it's exactly what I'm looking for. It's aspirational, right,
But in reality, perhaps that's not what they actually want.
And I think like whatever you like, you know, whatever
you want is fine, like and you shouldn't you shouldn't
be if it's if you don't actually want what comes
with dating someone who is very ambitious and career focused,
(17:47):
which means yeah, making a meal every now and then
cleaning up, you know, being the person who does a
lot of the domestic tasks, like being alone while that
person is traveling for work or like you know, making
yourself like like being off on your own with that
person is like doing work. Yeah, like being okay with
that and actually not just being okay with that, but
like understanding that like that is part of you know,
(18:11):
of your team, like but like not being salty about
and of course, like everyone gets salty when it's like,
you know, I think you can get grumpy about it sometimes,
but like not like being willing to take pride in
that because it reflects well on your relationship and like
you're better when you're you know, teammate is doing well. Yeah,
it's it is personal. I mean, I think that this
is a struggle that so many of us are dealing with,
(18:34):
and I want to talk this through and so many
other levels, but we have to take a breg stick around.
There is way more nuanced to this research. We will
unpack and walk through together in just a few moments,
But first a word from our sponsors and we're back.
(18:54):
And this is kind of an emotional episode for both
of us. It's very personal. So it's so directly related
to the trade offs that I think all of us
are navigating right now. Um, but hello, I would love
to hear from lesbian women if this is so not
an issue like in the LGBT community. I would love
(19:16):
to see what we can learn from folks who don't
have all this baggage around gender roles, because you know,
being in the marriage market, being you know, being dating,
being a person who's dating can feel like a very
vulnerable experience. And we're told from all the research on
shame and vulnerability by the way, shout out to burn
a Brown, that like, the best way to actually find
(19:38):
someone who loves you for being you is you have
to dare to let yourself be seen who you actually
how you actually want to show up in the world,
and not adapt and like hide your ambition while you're
in that dating pool. But then what this is saying
is that sorry, ladies, like because men still need to
feel like men, and being a man in our society
(20:00):
still means being a breadwinner, even though that's not necessarily
the kind of strict gender roles that any of us
want to adhere to, that it definitely those messages are internalized,
and the result is we hide, we hid our ambition.
Here in the HBr study, they did another a couple
of series is of of experiments that showed that when
(20:21):
placed in an all female group, those same NBA students
were way more likely to report that they would prefer
a high paying, high demand job. Sixty percent of single
women reported that, whereas when placed with male peers that
number dropped to forty two. So all like sixty percent
of these single ambitious women a certain number of like
(20:44):
what twenty something percent of them said actually no things
when they were surrounded by men. And so I mean
in all female groups, single women, the same sort of research,
I should say, showed up. The same kind of results
showed up when it comes to a job with a
quicker promotion and to partner partner track um, substantial travel,
all of those trade offs were like reminded of our
(21:08):
risk of being seen as a not so dedicated girlfriend,
not so dedicated parents, spouse, whatever. When we're just around men,
we dim our ambition, messed up. That's that's so awful.
And like, I you know, I'm I'm I'm thinking back
to when I was in high school. I went to
all girl high school, and like, you know, I I
(21:28):
we should do an entire episode around around now like that. Yeah,
but I mean I definitely felt like in high school
because it was just women, you never never even occurred
to me to like like it just was a different world. Like, so,
you know, they do study performing, they do studies where
it's like, oh, when women are around, when young women
are educated around young men, they demure more. They don't
(21:49):
want to answer questions because they you know, they participate less.
They don't want to be seen as bossy. And you
know it's funny is that that was the third experiment
that they did in this stuff, even among MBA students,
so we're not talking in high school, a breed school.
They conducted a student survey and analysis on participation grades
because in the NBA program class participation, yeah, it's a
(22:09):
big part of it. And so what they did was, um,
they found that and this is self reported. To take
all this stuff with a grand of saw because we
know self reported data is not always the best. But
they asked their NBA students, the same ones that they've
been um putting in this Career Center experiment, to see
if that they had avoided certain actions that they thought
(22:31):
would help their careers because they were concerned it would
make them look quote too ambitious, assertive, or pushy. Sixty
percent of single females said that they had avoided asking
for a raise or promotion for that reason. So there's
a lot of self awareness on the censorship Compared to
thirty nine percent of women who were married or in
(22:51):
a serious relationship and only twenty seven percent of men,
So sixty four percent of single women compared to thirty
nine percent of women in committed relationship, So over half
of the single women reported avoiding speaking up in meetings,
compared to about thirty of women who weren't single or men. Wow,
(23:12):
so really, I mean just like I mean, like I
I always connect with this, but like the patriarchy man
like it's like we smash it, smash it. Yeah, well
that's the thing. Doesn't this make you want to pull
your hair out? It makes me? It's this is this
is infuriating, and like like I said earlier, I mean
it's such a personal as women, as working women who
are you know, ambitious and pretty career focused. Like it's infuriating,
(23:34):
and I like, even just in this conversation, I'm like,
I think taking note of all of the ways that
has shown up in my personal life. It's it makes
me want to scream, Like and part of me wonders,
like is this going to as a you know, unmarried woman,
is this is what's going to be something that I
am dealing with my for my whole life, Like it's
just just gonna be my you know life is trying
(23:57):
to navigate success in a field that I care about
so much and love so much, but also having to
be mindful of like, well, do you want to get
married someday? Do you want a man to like think
you're attractive? Do you want a man to like think
that you're marriage material or like datable or whatever. And
it's like, I mean, the more I mean, this is
the whole other podcast episode. But the more I think
(24:17):
about this, there's a really great article about making the
choice to be single forever by this great writer Laurie Penny.
Shout out to her. But I always go back to
that where sometimes I think, and this sounds so like
gloom and doom. And I swear I'm a cheery person,
but like sometimes I think that the best option is
like just to be like I'm never getting married, I'm
never going to date. I'm just going to like perp
(24:39):
like intentionally live a single life the way that like
plenty of like writers and artists have done since forever,
and like making that choice because part of me is
like it is not worth the headache to have to
deal with navigating this mind field of like you can't
if you want to like have a partner, you can't
be your full self and like you can't be And
I also think they're like people don't understand what it's
(24:59):
like to be ach, ambitious or creative woman. People think
that like you're you know, if you have ambitions or
you're creative or whatever, that you're gonna get married and
have a kid and those are gonna fall by the wayside,
And like we totally allow men to show up in
that way that like, you know, your career or your
passion or whatever is a big part of your life,
and we don't afford that to women at all, or
(25:21):
at least we have an historically correct because it's where
I'm optimistic. This is where I'm optimistic. First of all,
I have been long obsessed with the happiness research around
being signal or being with someone. And I'm not saying
this is the reason anyone should ever get married. But connection, connection,
I think is why we're all here. Like at the
end of the day, I think human connection is a
(25:42):
humongous part of living a happy, healthy and successful life.
I put that in your cred But we shouldn't have
to sacrifice our art. Our careers are focused your passionate
our passions to do that right. I think it's about
finding the right kind of person and maybe at different
times in our lives, having the ability to communicate and
compromise mindfully or not or choose like this has been
(26:06):
a good ride, but like I'm not about monogamy, you
know what I mean, Like this has been a good ride,
but it's time to move on to the next, you know,
Like this is the question. I think one of the
answers that I've come across is, and this is a
core principle at bossed Up, is that we have to
treat our personal lives as important as our professional lives.
We have to see them together. We can't we I
think the compartmentalization can sometimes hurt our cause. And one
(26:30):
of the pieces of advice that they put together is
saying that there might be a place for grad schools,
like there might be a place for MBA programs or
college to help students think holistically about their ambitions personally
and professionally. That's basically the kind of safe space we've
created at Boston and say, hey, here's a radical concept.
(26:51):
Come bring your personal goals into the same piece of paper,
into the same weekend, in the same consideration as your
professional goals, and talk about them that way with the
people in your life. Yeah, I mean, and then like
I keep going back to myself because this is something
I deal with. It's it's a completely personal thing. But
like I am someone who like I can very clearly
see it in my life and how it's played out.
(27:13):
I can partmentalize the hell out of my my professional life,
like I I mean, for the longest time, if there
was any kind of overlap between personal and professional, like
I was so schemed out by that, like was not
something that I I I am, like I like, and
I think that part of it is because the work
that I've done, it's so it's social and like you're
(27:36):
talking about like don't date in the political world that yeah,
well that and other things. I mean, my work basically
for the longest time it's been around, you know, it's
been very outreach focused and like making friends with lots
of people, going out with lots of people, and making
people feel good about our like it's a relationship building
and like that can it can be super confusing, Like
having that be a big basis of your promotional work
(27:59):
can be very confused, using alongside like friendships and like
romantic relationships. And so for me, I just have to
have them completely distinct where it's like these are my
like coworkers and I love them dearly and they're so great.
But then but those are very different than my like
you know, professional and personal and family and so like, yeah,
well I think there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, but
(28:20):
I think that it can it can go. I think
that it does has not afforded me the ability to
like show up as my full my full self in
all the spaces you know, it's like I can't you know,
I like would be very if I went to a
professional development space and someone was like, so tell me
about your family ambitions, I would be like wawa, which
I'm not advocat ever either though to be clear, like
(28:43):
they can't legally do that if all that stuff. But
like I'm trying to think of what I'm trying to
say here. What I found helpful is bringing my work
to my dating life and making sure that my personal
priorities are integrated into my work choices to make sense
personal and again it's it's holistic. It sounds like yeah,
(29:05):
where it's like and I think, I mean, I've had
work situations where like they your your boss doesn't almost
does not expect you to be a person like you're
a robot and so like if you like or whatever,
it's like you're not able to show up as the
you know, individuals that we are with family responsibilities, friend responsibilities,
romantic responsibilities, and don't pretend to yourself like you can
(29:28):
check all of that back exactly exactly, and I think work,
I mean like bringing it back to your favorite thing,
which is like professional development work scenarios where they afford
for like you know that we're all people that you
know maybe one day, Yeah, we're I think it's great.
I think so too. All right, let's take a quick
break and collect our thoughts and take take the temperature
(29:48):
in here for a second, and we will be right
back with more sort of conclusions that these researchers came to,
and frankly, a whole lot more questions for you, because
we don't have this all figured out and I'd love
to hear what you have to say. So we'll be
right back after this quick break, and we're back, and
(30:12):
this is a big burly topic, So thanks for hanging
in there with us, listeners, slash. We're not sorry, because
I hope that the sort of the pain and challenge
of weeding through this stuff is like resonating because I
think we're all trying to figure this out if we
have any semblance of wanting to have ambition peacefully coexist
(30:34):
with love. That is what I've been writing about, by
the way, since high school and college. Like my my college,
what you might call a thesis, which was just a
really long paper, wasn't technically a thesis, was on gender
equality and romantic love amongst heterosexual couples. So that's like
bringing it back home for you of your writing and research,
like we could have a whole like podcast about the
(30:55):
philosophies behind romantic love and behind gender equality. And sadly,
that paper ended with there are no solutions. That's also
that paper ended with like they are fundamentally incongruent. But
here's here's the thing, right, let's look at the research
that we're we've been unpacking. All of these studies show
that women do, in fact censor their ambition, downplay their
(31:17):
ambition when they are single, and believe that it might
hurt their dating prospects. So two things they're One is
that we need to be able to make that choice
mindfully and not unconsciously. So if that's you know, if
you want to I think the burnet brown stuff also
comes back to the fact that if you if you
bring that shame into your dating life, you're going to
(31:38):
attract people who are attracted to a false version of you. Yes,
and that's I mean, that's never good for anything. I
used to sort of be the kind of girl who
would like pretend to be really into like sports and
like whatever other dumb stuff guys like, and then when
they like, you would know that you're not. Now it's like,
I mean, I have, I have, I'm kind of like
learning as I go, and that like, I don't want
(31:59):
to pretend to be the kind of person who enjoy
stuff that I don't enjoy. And then you know, and
then later like be like, oh, actually I hate this,
and it's not fair to anybody. It's not fair to
me or to the person that I'm doing. Okay, And
the third thing here is that to keep in mind
that there are we're all bringing the context of antiquated
(32:22):
but sticking gender roles with us to these conversations. So
there are many ways in which we unconsciously, unconsciously have
internalized what it means to be a good woman and
being a non threatening, sweet, non ambitious person was wrapped
up in all that baggage that both men and women
are still dealing with in terms of the proclaimed man
(32:43):
who wants an ambitious woman but struggles with the fact
that that comes with a lot of stuff that he
might not have bargained for. I think we're still figuring
that stuff out, and like there's just I think it's
a lifetime of of what the research really comes to say,
which is open and honest conversation. I think it always
comes back to that, and I think, like you know,
(33:05):
it's I often say this on the show, but like
gender is like a mine field sometimes and it's it's
often difficult to see the ways that it shows up
in our personal lives, but it does. And it's like
our part of the whole trip of the patriarchy is
that we're all kind of unlearning it and unpacking it
together as we and like we don't we don't know
how it's going to show up, and even the most
(33:25):
like woke with it progressive couple, it's I mean, these
things are in grained, like it's they've been in grain
for so long that of course we can't escape them
even if we would like to write. And so having
conversations that are not just about your likes and dislikes
like do you like long walks on the beach with
painted gladas? Yeah, but also your career ambitions and expectations
(33:47):
about mutual support, What does that actually look like? How
does that change over time? And continue to have those conversations.
And that actually came out from another study that I
think is worth mentioning here, albeit briefly. Um, that shows
what happens a little further on down the life cycle
of this problem. So the initial problem we talked about
(34:08):
is women downplaying our ambition during the dating season of
life here um or at least dating season one, right
for whatever that should be a Netflix show, dating season one. Uh.
So here's what happens next. And I I really hate
to be the bearer of bad news on this, but
there's a research that found that women with high status
(34:31):
careers in particular more demanding career paths than their husbands.
So again, this is super heteronormative um lead to women,
those women being indeed more likely to experience feelings of
resentfulness or embarrassment, feeling that their status was somehow decreased
(34:53):
by their husband's lower status position, which has obviously a
negative impact on marital happiness US and an increased likelihood
of divorce. So whoa nelly. Okay, So here's what we've
done here. We've downplayed our ambition. We've reeled in a match. Okay,
we get married, then your career maybe takes off or
(35:14):
you have a lot of ambition, you get that highest
status career that you've been driving for your whole life,
and now you resent your husband as a result of that.
And I mean, it's like a recipe for an unhappy marriage.
And this is all because of gender roles, right, Like
it's a it's a recipe for not for like resentment
and bitterness. And then like I don't think this is
(35:36):
this is in the research, but like if you have
a kid in the mix, like it's just like the
idea of like, oh mom resents dad because because the
patriarchy forced gender roles, forced her to like be a
version of herself that she wasn't to attract him. Like
that's and there is there's one silver lining in this research.
There is a solution, a cure. The cure to not
(35:59):
having a resentful, high octane woman driving the career of
the family is when husbands provide or at least their
wives felt that their husbands provide high levels of instrumental support,
such as helping with domestic responsibilities or child and elder care.
Then in that case, like having a higher status career
(36:21):
than your husband doesn't negatively impact your marital happiness, right,
And I think that's I mean that that makes so
much sense to me because women just want I mean,
like we don't want to feel supported, right, and we
want to feel like meaningfully supported and like tangibly. Yeah yeah,
where it's like you like, and this is I think
goes back to the analogy that you talked about with Brad,
where it's like, if you're a team, if one member
(36:42):
of the team is like killing it and like you know,
doing all of doing all the things, the other member
of the team is finding a way to also manfully
contribute to the team. And it's like even if even
if you know you're not to go with the shouldn't
be making sports analogies, but I'll try to. If you're
the like pitch hitter, like the number the stars escapes
(37:02):
my getting all out there, but like if you're the
star player on the team whatever, that like even if
you're like kind of on the bench as the power manager,
you're still finding a way to support, right, Like, you're
still part of the same team. I shouldn't beautiful. But
also I think it's I mean, I have some weird
feelings about this because I like to think that I'm
(37:24):
motivated to contribute to my partnership, right think, there's definitely
this desire to make someone as happy as they've made
you or whatever that whatever you might want to call that.
Um that like, desire to contribute to the team as
a win, like whatever that win looks like. But would
we ever say this to women, Like, look at this research.
(37:44):
This research says, like, let's just sub about men for
women here for a second. The research basically says, if
we were to reverse the words men and women here,
it would say men in higher status careers resent their
wives unless their wives pitching tangibly at home. And so
I just find I mean, that would not be politically correct.
(38:06):
So this study kind of rubs me the wrong way.
Is like contribute, duh. Everybody wants to feel supported emotionally
and very practically when it comes to the care duties
of the work of unpaid labor. That goes into homemaking
and child rearing and elder care and all that stuff
that's unaccounted for in our economy, um and contributing to
(38:31):
the bottom line of the family budget. Right yeah, I
mean there you don't have to, like, there are other
ways to contribute to a domestic partnership than breadwinning, right, Like,
and I do think this is a whole other episode,
but like, like the domestic labor has been because it's
associated with women. I think that's why we valuate so
like childcare, elder care, domestic things that business. Actually, Amory
(38:54):
Slaughter wrote a book called Unfinished Business about that exact problem.
Justin Caroline did an episode shout out to them, because
I mean it's it's so true, Like, and I think
that we we downplay that, but it's so important. And
it's like if you how are you able to go
out and do wage earning work if someone is not
either you're paying for like a maide or a clip
to come do things where someone in your household is
(39:14):
doing that exactly. Sigh. It is a troubling one. It's
it calls into question, like, well, what the hell are
we supposed to do about it? Right, Like, as single
women who are potentially in the dating pool. Like we've
already talked through some of our coping mechanisms, but can
we also talk about what men can do? Yes, one
(39:37):
clean up around the house, but yeah, please do pitch
in equally. We're getting closer, but women, According to the
Washington Post last year, women are still doing twice the
amount of housework and child care duties in households and
which men and women both work full time. So let
that sink in for a second. And I also think,
like I hate the societal thing of like, oh, like
do you ever see those memes on social media that
(39:58):
are like, um, if a woman does cook, like she's not.
It's like like learn how to Like we should be
teaching both boys and girls at an early age how
to take care of yourself, how to cook, how to
clean injury, all of that, Like this idea that like
it's a woman's job to come in and like do that.
Like that's not cute, that's not good. So I think
(40:18):
to hammer it to sort of bring this baby home here.
I think we want to make conscious choices about being
clear with ourselves and our loved ones about our ambition
professionally knowing that you don't have to be super crazy ambitious.
You don't have to want to travel all the time
for work, You don't have to want to seek out
(40:39):
a high paying job. But if you do, maybe don't
suppress that desire, especially while you're in the dating markets
and accounting for the unconscious habit that has now been
proven that women tend to shy away from being clear
about their ambition professionally around single men, Like is that
a thing that you're experiencing if you're not in the
(41:00):
dating pool, if you're not looking to get married, if
you're not attracting a male partner, like I don't know, tbd,
Like I would love more research on this. I think
the researchers actually ended that study by saying, we need
to test inhibiting factors. We need to test um how
women can deal with this, and we also need men
to check that unconscious bias against ambitious women, Like we
(41:22):
need you to be down with ambitious women and be
down with what actually comes with ambitious women, or at
the very least, don't have that cognitive dissonance between say
you want what you actually want totally just like I mean,
I keep saying this, but like show up as your
authentic self, right, like if you if you just scary,
it is scary, and it's and it's a chat. We
(41:43):
have to sort of like what you were saying at
the beginning of the show of unlearning, like challenging yourself
to unlearn being demeure about your accomplishments. I think we
all have to agree challenge ourselves to show up and
the way that we need to to make to make
this make this thing work. Yeah, because the people that
become unattracked did to you when you're being your unapologetically
ambitious self are people that you would rather weed out. Yeah,
(42:06):
you don't want that, you don't need anyway, ding ding ding.
I think that is a secret happiness. I also think,
you know, we could do a whole episode on this
around Burnet Brown's research and a lot of the social
work that's been done from the sociological perspective on shame
and why we why it is scary to show up
as your authentic self. Um, but we were. We want
(42:28):
to hear from you, I mean girls, we need to
hear from you. We need from you folks who are
not folks. This is again a very heateronormative episode. We
want to hear how other kinds of couples are doing it.
I have a feeling that gay couples have figured this out,
I really do, Like I think I have a feeling
that when you've already bucked all of the gender normative,
(42:49):
heteronormative gender roles that come with relationships, I have a
feeling that the gays will lead the way on this.
So please tell us. Tell us what this experience has
been like for you, because clearly we're still struggling with it. Um,
and tell us about if you're a man listening to this,
tell us what it's been like to unlearn some of
(43:10):
the unconscious habits at or feelings that you might have
or attitudes that you might have been taught to feel
about having a high octane woman on your arm? Like,
what does it look like to have a girlfriend whose
career is crushing it? Um? Do you feel threatened? Women?
Do you feel threatening? Like I sometimes do or did
and now I don't care that I do, but you know, like,
(43:31):
how do you how do you get over that? Yeah?
Please please write if we want to hear it all,
please write. It's clearly something that we're like struggling with
in real time. So we can work through this together. Yeah.
Please don't hesitate to drop us a line on Instagram
at stuff mom Never Told You, on Twitter at mom
Stuff podcast, and get in our inbox at mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com. One four
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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