Romm - Double bind: women on ambition

Copyright 2017 by Robin Romm

All rights reserved

First Edition

On Impractical Urges, Copyright 2017 by Ayana Mathis. All rights reserved.
No Happy Harmony, Elizabeth Corey: A version of this essay previously appeared
in First Things. The Price of Black Ambition, Roxane Gay: A version of this essay
previously appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review. The Chang Girls, Lan
Samantha Chang. Original Sin, Copyright 2017 by Francine Prose. All rights
reserved. Know Your Place, Copyright 2017 by Ringwald, Inc. Escape
Velocity 2017 Claire Vaye Watkins

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JACKET DESIGN BY STEVE ATTARDO

THE JACKET AND END PAGE PATTERN FOR THIS BOOK IS THE RESULT OF A PUBLIC PARTICIPATORY PROJECT WHERE WE ASKED WOMEN TO ANONYMOUSLY SUBMIT THEIR THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, AND STORIES ABOUT AMBITION AND HOW THE DOUBLE BIND HAS AFFECTED THEM. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED.

ISBN 978-1-63149-121-4

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For Jacquelyn and Sylvie, my mother and daughter.

DOUBLE BIND

W hen I first asked successful women to write about ambition, I received enthusiastic responses. Yes! Great topic, very rich, very currentso much to say. But invariably, a few days later, Id receive a clarifying follow-up email: I just want you to know that Im not sure Im ambitious. Lucky, yes. Hardworking, yes. Disciplined, very. But Im not sure about ambitious.

This happened not once, but numerous times. Most of these womenbest-selling writers, tenured professors, doctors, lawyers, scientistswere working at the top of their professions. They lectured at universities, raised children, wrote books, and navigated mercurial careers with fearlessness and grace. Were they really going to argue that their accomplishments had nothing to do with ambition?

This discomfort with the term ambition and all it suggested made me even more eager to commission essays. My own experiences with ambition were fraught. Ive always been goal-oriented, motivated by the desire for mastery and achievement. (I define ambition, per Anna Fels, as the desire to do good work in the world and have that work recognized by people who understand it.) But by the time I got to college and became increasingly self-aware, this quality felt more complicated than it had felt as a girl, not only something to be proud of but also something to cloak. In my twenties, I inherited what so many young women inherit, the pervasive sense that striving and achieving had to be approached delicately or you risked the negative judgment of others. The ideal was achievement with an air of self-sacrifice or gentleness. As I moved on, into the world, I continued to feel a tug between two desires: to be the best student/investigator/writer/editor/professor that I could possibly be and the desire to be seen the way I saw myself, as motivated and curious, not aggressive or strident.

I didnt always recognize this for what it wasthe perpetual double bind of the gender, success paired eternally with scrutiny and retreat. Until I began to edit and compile this book, I only suspected how this conflict pervaded the lives of other women, how thoroughly the desire to succeed in their work complicated their careers, family planning, childrearing, art-making, friendships, and families. As I got deeper into the project, I not only found my tribe of conflict-ridden, energetic, interesting, thinking women, but I also realized that this central topic had never been addressed with the nuance and detail I craved.

For the past couple of years, every time this book has come up at a dinner, at a party, at an artists colony, on the airplane, it has inspired passionate dialogue. Isnt ambition about ego? Can doing good or living a good life be an ambition or is ambition solely about career? Are you fetishizing career with a book on ambition? Its a problem that women go to part time when they have kids; it leaves men in all the management roles and so the work culture never changes. Its a problem to leave your kids with sitterssets off a spiritual crisis. I gave up on ambition, I dont see myself as ambitious, I have always been ambitious, my husband thinks I am ambitious but... I want my daughters to be ambitious but I also want them to be selfless... My mother never got to do the things she wanted and so I feel called to do them. I am wildly ambitious and only recently realized people find that ugly. Is being wildly ambitious seen as ugly? I dont like the idea of selfishness, so I dont like the wordambition.I prefer the wordpassionate.I prefer the wordfortunate.I prefer the wordengaged. More and more people joined the conversation, argued or swapped tales from the trenches. I marveled at just how deep this issue cut and through how many layers.

Im a writer and a reader, a believer that stories do what no statistic or graph can: humanize dilemmas that often feel intellectual or abstract. A slew of groundbreaking business and sociology books have recently tackled the subject of women and striving, but I wanted the nitty-gritty details, the actual ways striving affected individual lives. Women said they breastfed while being CEOs but how? Women switched careers midlife or defied their families expectations, but what did that look like? Why is the word so difficult to embrace? Who else out there felt conflicted when they sought success, when they achieved success?

These stories were hard to write. Ambition, for many of my contributors, felt connected to deeply private impulses and actions that made them too vulnerable, that exposed things that felt less pretty or tidy than the faade they wanted to projector felt they needed to project to stay in their roles. Frequently, I received essays on loss or faith or childhood or forgiveness, but not on ambition. Back to the drawing board.

But this challenge and the triumph of the resulting essays are what make the book so strong. Theres no recipe here for how to get a raise, or wardrobe tips for looking like the corporate warrior. The contributors, through bravery and discipline and many, many drafts, have created a striking book about struggle and failure and achievement and identity and everything in between. Its a validation that womens ambition is tricky to navigate but entirely worthwhile, and that no young woman should feel, as I did, confused and silenced by all that is unspoken about it.

Of course, the deeper I got into the compilation process, the more I wanted to include. Every essay inspired me to think of another topic, equally crucial. We had one on balancing motherhood and career, but did we have one on giving up a career for motherhood? We had one on writing, but what about engineering? Everyone I spoke to had a wish list: What about a woman in the clergy? What about an essay by a woman who failed? What about an Etsy entrepreneur? What about a woman in banking?