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"  Here&amp;#039;s an experiment: Ask the most successful woman you know whether she&amp;#039;s ambitious. Chances are that her reaction will recall the faux feminine coyness of Miss Piggy, the Muppet who&amp;#039;d flutter her eyelashes and simper &amp;quot;Moi?&amp;quot; at such a question\u2014even as she aimed a lethal karate chop to get you out of her way. Over the past three decades, I&amp;#039;ve interviewed some of the world&amp;#039;s most celebrated women: queens and princesses, senators and rock stars, moguls and movie legends, first ladies and fashion titans. Some were barracudas whose appetite for power would make Machiavelli look like a pushover, but only one ever owned up to being ambitious. Soon after Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas, I met her at their baronial apartment overlooking Central Park West. Waving a hand bedecked with a diamond as big as a grape, Zeta-Jones gestured toward the mantel, where her husband&amp;#039;s Academy Awards were displayed, and confided that she wasn&amp;#039;t satisfied with his reflected glory. &amp;quot;I want my Oscar up there too,&amp;quot; she said, her dark eyes glittering with determination.  That shouldn&amp;#039;t have seemed shocking; for a film actress, an Oscar is the ultimate recognition (and Zeta-Jones soon won her own). But in all my years interviewing movie stars, nobody had ever admitted to coveting one. Instead, I&amp;#039;ve listened to countless famous women deny they were ambitious, at least for themselves, although many allowed as how they wouldn&amp;#039;t mind accomplishing worthy things on behalf of others. Even those whose names were household words claimed to have no interest in power. Power? Eek! The very word elicited such alarm that you&amp;#039;d think I was prying into some shameful secret.  Nor am I the only journalist to observe such reactions; to hear many women tell it, their careers are propelled mainly by coincidence and good fortune. &amp;quot;Things sort of happened,&amp;quot; said Drew Gilpin Faust when The New York Times asked how she became the first woman president of Harvard University. When Jennifer Granholm was asked by The Detroiter where she gets the energy that helped her become governor of Michigan, she replied, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know. Lucky, I guess.&amp;quot;  Whatever their level of attainment, women typically portray themselves as passive and reactive rather than as game-changers\u2014as if their success flowed from outside forces rather than their own ability to pursue clear goals effectively. Men have less trouble owning up to their intentions, not to mention formulating them in the first place. One survey showed that 46 percent of male political candidates, versus 28 percent of female ones, agreed with the statement &amp;quot;It was entirely my idea to run.&amp;quot; Another study demonstrated that women are also more likely than men to attribute agency to others: Twenty-two percent of women but only 14 percent of men said, &amp;quot;I had not seriously thought about running until someone else suggested it to me.&amp;quot;  Listen to the way Hillary Clinton described her reaction when Barack Obama asked her to become his secretary of state: &amp;quot;I was stunned,&amp;quot; Clinton told a women&amp;#039;s magazine. &amp;quot;I really was very unconvinced.... I just really had a lot of doubts, and I kept suggesting other people. `Well, how about this person! How about that person!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Even when they reach the top, women balk at owning their success. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think of myself as a businesswoman,&amp;quot; Oprah told Fortune\u2014a remarkable statement coming from the richest self-made woman in America and the country&amp;#039;s first black billionaire. Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice couldn&amp;#039;t even acknowledge her own intelligence. &amp;quot;You graduated from high school when you were 15. At what point did you know you were a very smart girl?&amp;quot; Oprah asked her in O magazine. &amp;quot;Never,&amp;quot; said Rice.  &amp;quot;But isn&amp;#039;t there a part of you that knows you&amp;#039;re very smart?&amp;quot; Oprah protested.  &amp;quot;I think I&amp;#039;m above average but not much more. When you&amp;#039;ve been a professor and provost at Stanford, you know what real genius is. I&amp;#039;ve seen genius, and I&amp;#039;m not it.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s a wide range between &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;genius,&amp;quot; but Rice immediately selected the most extreme measure and judged herself wanting: If I&amp;#039;m not Einstein, I don&amp;#039;t even deserve to call myself intelligent. Instead, why couldn&amp;#039;t Rice have said: &amp;quot;Yes, I recognize, after all these years of achievement, that I&amp;#039;m smart, and I feel a lot of pride at having worked hard and earned my success. A strong sense of self-worth gives you confidence, and I hope every woman can realize her own potential and derive the same benefits from doing so that I have.&amp;quot; Of course, high-profile women who minimize their accomplishments might simply be telling the public what it expects to hear. In private, maybe these paragons recognize that all this self-effacement is baloney\u2014a pretense to accommodate society&amp;#039;s gender biases. After all, research consistently shows that women are condemned for qualities that elicit admiration for men. &amp;quot;When men are being tough, voters define it as strength, but when women show toughness, the voters think they&amp;#039;re bitches,&amp;quot; pollster and political strategist Celinda Lake reports. &amp;quot;The research shows parallel stereotypes of women in executive management.&amp;quot; Nor are younger generations immune from these kinds of sexist judgments. &amp;quot;Why has there never been a female student-body president at my high school?&amp;quot; wonders a twentysomething Harvard graduate who attended a prestigious prep school, where she was an outstanding student and leader. &amp;quot;Sometimes I ask myself, Why didn&amp;#039;t I run? Probably because I was afraid people wouldn&amp;#039;t like me. And the truth is, they probably wouldn&amp;#039;t have. There&amp;#039;s this attitude that if you&amp;#039;re a girl, there&amp;#039;s a limit on how much success you&amp;#039;re allowed. When I was nominated for a major award, the friends of another candidate went around telling people that they shouldn&amp;#039;t vote for me because I already had `too much&amp;#039;; I was the editor of the school paper and had been accepted early decision to Harvard. So the other person won.&amp;quot; The popularity issue is further complicated by a sexual double standard. Power is perceived as enhancing a man&amp;#039;s desirability; as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger\u2014a paunchy, bespectacled older man known for dating improbably beautiful starlets\u2014once observed, &amp;quot;Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.&amp;quot; But women tend to be neutered by elevated status. &amp;quot;Even highly successful and ambitious women, like CEOs I&amp;#039;ve interviewed, are loath to identify themselves as ambitious because they feel it desexualizes them,&amp;quot; says Anna Fels, MD, a psychiatrist and author of Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women&amp;#039;s Changing Lives. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s less true in the black community and in the lower-middle and lower classes; those women haven&amp;#039;t been brought up with the expectation that femininity is equated with a subordinate role. But for the white middle-class woman, it&amp;#039;s a major issue.&amp;quot; Author Catherine Orenstein confronted women&amp;#039;s reluctance to put themselves forward when she started the Op-Ed Project, a training program to expand the range of voices represented on the nation&amp;#039;s editorial pages. She was inspired by the striking gender imbalance in the major media\u201480 percent of op-eds are written by men, though editors claim that the disparity is not caused by discrimination but by the simple fact that up to 90 percent of submissions come from men. &amp;quot;I call it the culture of self-abnegation,&amp;quot; Orenstein says. &amp;quot;At the beginning of each session, we did an exercise where we wanted women to answer the question, `Why are you an expert?&amp;#039; People hated the exercise. They said it was immodest and elitist, that it felt like self-promotion. Well over 3,000 people have come through our programs, and it&amp;#039;s very rare that men have trouble with this exercise. With women, it&amp;#039;s virtually universal. When women talk about the reasons, they almost always stem from virtues taken to excess: modesty, humility, responsibility, selflessness. But when you&amp;#039;re living in a culture where you don&amp;#039;t have a big voice, you start to internalize the external context, and you become part of your own marginalization.&amp;quot; A longtime advocate for women&amp;#039;s rights, Gloria Feldt takes on these self-defeating attitudes in her new book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. &amp;quot;Though insidious cultural barriers remain, we must face the fact that from the boardroom to the bedroom, from public office to personal relationships, no law or formal barrier is keeping us from achieving equality and justice except our own unwillingness to `just take them,&amp;#039; as Sojourner Truth urged a century and a half ago,&amp;quot; writes Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood. Her interest in power was sparked by research she did on women in politics. &amp;quot;Millions of dollars are being spent to help recruit, train, and support women to get elected, and yet they&amp;#039;ve scarcely moved the dial at all,&amp;quot; Feldt says. &amp;quot;The problem was not that the doors were not open. The problem was that women were not walking through those doors\u2014and that just blew me away.&amp;quot; One reason women hang back is what Feldt calls a lack of &amp;quot;intentionality.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It seems that from their earliest days, boys know they&amp;#039;re supposed to have a specific interest; they can decide to be and do whatever they want,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Girls are now told they can be and do anything, but they&amp;#039;re much less likely to be taught that they should have a life plan that&amp;#039;s intentional. Girls are socialized to be reactive; boys are socialized to be the askers, girls the askees.&amp;quot; Such patterns have been documented by observers like Fels and psychologist Mary Pipher, the author of Reviving Ophelia. Further, when females do develop a plan, they&amp;#039;re less likely to muster the confidence to pursue it, according to the experts. &amp;quot;A man looks in the mirror and says, `I&amp;#039;m going to run for office.&amp;#039; He doesn&amp;#039;t question whether he should or shouldn&amp;#039;t do it; he doesn&amp;#039;t question his qualifications,&amp;quot; says Feldt, who teaches a course in women, power, and leadership at Arizona State University. &amp;quot;Women are more likely to say, `Something is wrong, and I want to help fix it.&amp;#039; But women are more easily dissuaded. If a man sees one thing he can do, he applies for the job. If a woman sees one thing she can&amp;#039;t do, she doesn&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; One solution Feldt proposes is for women to reframe the concept of power, shifting its meaning from dominance over others to the capacity to achieve constructive ends. Feldt describes the switch as going from an &amp;quot;oppressive power-over&amp;quot; to an &amp;quot;expansive power-to.&amp;quot; Of course, the catch is that you tend not to have the &amp;quot;power-to&amp;quot; unless you&amp;#039;ve figured out how to acquire the &amp;quot;power-over,&amp;quot; so it&amp;#039;s hard to believe that giving the word an image makeover will accomplish much. Similarly, Feldt&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;nine ways to embrace your power&amp;quot;\u2014which include &amp;quot;use what you&amp;#039;ve got,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;embrace controversy,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;create a movement&amp;quot;\u2014may be sensible, but they&amp;#039;re hardly news to experienced activists. Quibbling aside, Feldt&amp;#039;s overall message is a sound one: While we can&amp;#039;t magically eliminate bias, we can work on self-imposed handicaps anytime we choose. Unfortunately, the importance of doing so often escapes the young. Youth and beauty confer so much power that it&amp;#039;s easy to overlook the need to develop alternative sources. Many women assume that marriage provides the answer, that having a husband with status and financial clout will protect them\u2014but all it takes is a divorce to expose the risks of relying on someone else to give you power, not to mention money. And the truth is, even when marriage and economic security endure, women can suffer terribly from a lack of personal power. As a movie star and one of the world&amp;#039;s most celebrated beauties, Grace Kelly had already won an Academy Award when she married Prince Rainier II of Monaco at 26. Twenty years later, I traveled to the French Riviera to interview her at the pink palace where her husband presided over his glamorous kingdom. Princess Grace had everything fairy tales promise: fame and fortune, a royal title, three beautiful children. And yet I&amp;#039;ve rarely met a woman who exuded such a palpable sense of sadness and regret. Her Serene Highness seemed like an ironic description for such a wistful woman, as she confessed that she would have liked to resume acting, but her husband wouldn&amp;#039;t let her. She didn&amp;#039;t acknowledge what insiders also whispered about: that he was chronically unfaithful, and that she, as a good Catholic, remained in her marriage despite being deeply unhappy. Once, she commanded respect for her own work, earned her own keep, and was acclaimed for her own efforts. Now she lived through other people\u2014as a wife, a mother, a dutiful figurehead consigned to empty ceremonial duties; when she wrote a book, it was on flower arranging. To me, Princess Grace seemed like a forlorn bird trapped in a gilded cage, her song forever stilled. I left Monaco resolved never to give up my own song in favor of marriage and motherhood, no matter how luxurious the cage. I later became a wife and mother and raised two children of my own. But children grow up; mine are both in college now. Although I miss them, the empty nest hasn&amp;#039;t left me bereft. I&amp;#039;ve got my own life, my own career, and my own power. I&amp;#039;ve never made a more important choice. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a11485/why-women-don-t-say-they-are-ambitious/>