A Crisis in Women's Leadership: The Fear of Success Syndrome and the Ambition Gap

Matina Horner  is an American psychologist who was the sixth president of Radcliffe College. She is known for pioneering the concept "fear of success" in the late 1970s. In a remarkable piece of research, Horner suggested that women had a "motivation to avoid success". Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook  and a Harvard graduate  who is ranked one of Fortune's list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business is the author of the best seller, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She identifies the "leadership ambition gap" among women. What is it about girls and women that leads them to avoid stepping up to their full ambition and positions of leadership?

Sex role conditioning is a powerful thing. Here are some findings from research on gifted girls:

• Gifted girls’ IQ scores drop in adolescence, perhaps as girls begin to perceive the giftedness in females is undesirable.
• Gifted girls take less rigorous courses than gifted boys in high school.
• Highly gifted girls often do not receive recognition for their achievements.
• Highly gifted girls attend less prestigious colleges than highly gifted boys.
• Highly gifted girls aspire to careers having moderate rather than high status.

Professional ambition is expected of men but optional for women and sometimes worse-a negative. Ambitious women step outside the gender box and are not a compliment in our culture. As Sandberg claims, "Female accomplishments come at a costs." She goes on to share a story that when she went to college, her parents emphasized academic success, but they emphasized marriage more.
There are other blatant cultural messages. Gymboree once sold onesies (one piece jumper for babies) proclaiming, "Smart like Daddy" for boys and "Pretty like Mommy" for girls. The sex role socialization begins as an infant!

One more component of the fear of success and the ambition gap is that success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. Many agree this is the bias at the core of this dilemma for women. It is not feminine and she will not be liked or rewarded for her ambition.

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