Off-Ramps and On-Ramps

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Claiming and Sustaining Ambition

Ambition is a problematic issue for women. Our data shows that talented women are not as ambitious as their male peers and that the gap widens as women move through their thirties and forties. In the business sector, for example, 53 percent of highly qualified women ages twenty-one to forty see themselves as “very ambitious,” whereas in the forty-one to fifty-five age group that percentage drops to 37 percent.

A good part of the problem is the nonlinearity of many female careers. Off-ramps and scenic routes are difficult to recover from—it is the rare woman who emerges from a career break with her job prospects intact. DeAnne Aguirre—the senior vice president and managing partner of Booz Allen Hamilton’s global ...