Women’s Ambition Isn’t Withering, It Needs More Nourishing Soil
Every fall, McKinsey & Co along with Leanin.org reveal the Women in the Workplace report and reading it feels a bit like getting rehearsal notes. Some parts validate what we already know, some parts sting a little, and all of it reminds us that the show could use a rewrite.
This year, one truth jumps off the page. Women in the workforce are motivated, they are simply running out of places to put that ambition.
The numbers tell the story. Women and men care equally about their careers and show almost identical levels of motivation. Yet senior women report far less meaningful support. Only 29% say their manager regularly checks in on their growth. Just 26% receive projects aligned with their goals, and only 20% were offered leadership training in the past two years compared with 34% of senior men. That does not sound like a lack of drive. That is an underfunded production.
It reminds me of old-school kids marketing (cringing as I give away my age). Cartoon blocks on Saturday mornings, cereal commercials every seven minutes, and a flimsy plastic toy that felt like treasure. The show and the sales pitch stayed in their own lanes. Now kids consume shorter-form content where the branding is part of the plot. The audience didn’t disappear. They evolved. And so did the world around them.
Women’s ambition is no different. The audience around it has shifted.
The report shows that many women are still carrying more of the household load. About a quarter of entry and senior level women who are not pursuing promotion cite personal obligations as a major barrier compared with 15% of men. So women rely on flexibility to make it all work, but that flexibility comes with a cost. When women work remotely most of the week, their chances of having a sponsor drop from 52% to 37% and their promotion rates dip too. For men, those numbers barely move. So the very thing women use to keep their lives functioning is interpreted as a lack of ambition. It is not. It is logistics. It is survival. It is juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle on a slackened cable wire. If anything, it proves the real point. The ambition is there. The cable wire is too thin.
And here is another pattern that feels familiar inside Pivot With Purpose. Many women finally arrive at the level they worked so hard for and then look around and think, is this really what I was climbing toward? The study shows that senior women who are not interested in advancing often point to being passed over, not seeing a realistic path forward, or watching the leaders above them burn out and look miserable. Loneliness plays a role too. Research shows that nearly 80% of women in corporate roles feel lonely because of their jobs, and the isolation grows as they rise. Ambition is not the issue. It is the cost of carrying it alone.
According to the study, when women receive the same level of support as men from managers, sponsors, and senior colleagues, the ambition gap disappears entirely. Women’s motivation to advance jumps right back to equal levels. In other words, the problem was never ambition. It is asking women to perform inside a format that no longer fits. Update the format the way kids' media evolved, and suddenly the ambition syncs perfectly with the moment.
And that is where Pivot With Purpose (enter stage left). The real question is not whether you want more. It is where your ambition belongs now that you realize you have outgrown the theater. Pivot With Purpose gives women a community where ambition is not misread or minimized, where you design the next act instead of waiting for someone else’s script.
If something in this data stirs you, listen to it. Your ambition is still bright. Now aim it somewhere that knows what to do with that kind of wattage.
From your biggest champion,
Nicole
