Women are less likely than men to want top corporate jobs, study finds

Sheryl Sandberg may be telling women to lean in. But according to new research from the Facebook executive’s own organization and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., plenty of women — and men — don’t really want to, at least when it comes to the very top executive jobs.

The new report, released Wednesday, collected data from 118 companies and surveyed nearly 30,000 employees about their ambitions and their perceptions about career opportunities.

It found that women at all levels, whether near the top of the corporate ladder or just starting out, were less likely than their male peers to desire the highest corporate leadership jobs.

Just 60% of senior female managers said they wanted a top executive job, compared with 72% of men. Among entry-level employees, the gap was narrower (albeit the interest was also lower), with just 39% of women and 47% of men saying they want the top slot.

The gap can’t all be explained by women’s family obligations or motherhood. Although women with children tended to cite balancing work and family when explaining why they didn’t want to join the C suite, nearly the same percentage of men (62% versus 65% of women) said it was their top reason as well.

Meanwhile, women without children more often cited the stress and pressure that come with holding such powerful jobs than they did the work-family challenges that could result from them.

“This is not a women’s issue,” said Rachel Thomas, president of LeanIn, which partnered with McKinsey on the research. “It’s a workforce issue.”

Perhaps most interesting was the finding that mothers were 15% more likely than women without children to say they wanted the top job.

“It dispels the idea that being a parent diminishes your ambition levels,” said Lareina Yee, a partner in McKinsey’s San Francisco office.

As previous studies have found, the new report also showed that black, Hispanic and Asian women were, on average, 43% more interested in becoming a top executive than white women were and 16% more interested than white men were.

The study also reveals some uncomfortable truths for corporate leaders who think benefits such as generous maternity leaves will get more women to the top.

Although some 65% of companies in the survey offered extended maternity leave, just 4% of their female employees had used it. More than 90% of both women and men said they thought taking long family leaves would hurt their careers.

Comparing ambition levels across different subsets of workers is interesting, but it’s worth keeping sight of the overall finding that aspirations for top leadership roles among all workers — particularly women — are still relatively low.

A separate academic paper published last week showed a similar unwillingness among women to pursue high-level jobs.

Researchers at Harvard Business School found, among nine studies, that women listed fewer goals related to achieving power at work, saw more tough trade-offs with high-level jobs, and — though they were confident they could attain top positions — saw them as less desirable.

Jena McGregor writes a daily column analyzing leadership in the news for the Washington Post’s On Leadership section.