TOPX Member Article
Women in Life Sciences: Ambitious and Ready to Lead!
Article written by Vera Gelissen, NOBCO Senior Coach for ambitious women
Women in Life Sciences: Ambitious and Ready to Lead!
an Analysis of Ambition Among Young Professionals in the life sciences: A Gender Perspective
Abstract: This study examines the concept of ambition among young professionals in life sciences, focusing on gender differences. Data was collected from a major career networking event for the life sciences where 19 women and 15 men, aged between 21 and 34, were interviewed. The study investigates the respondents' self-perceived ambition levels and their career aspirations. The respondents, both male and female, seemed in agreement about what ‘ambition’ means: drive, personal development, goal-orientation and hard work were the most frequently mentioned concepts. Interestingly, when asked about their self-perceived ambition levels, the female respondents were slightly over-represented in the "very much ambitious" category, challenging traditional assumptions that women tend to express less ambition than men. For both males and females, the most prevalent career goals are ‘making a difference’, ‘work happiness’ and a ‘leadership position’. The type and level of leadership responsibilities mentioned are also found to be similar if we compare the females to the males.All in all, the male and female professionals seem rather in agreement about what they want from their careers and how they express their ambition. However, despite this agreement, subtle differences were also found. The wish to pursue entrepreneurship was almost exclusively mentioned by men between 30 and 34 years old. This wish was not represented amongst the female respondents, where only one woman considered the possibility of starting her own company next to other leadership positions. Interestingly, only women mentioned concerns about how to combine family life with their career goals at some point in the future. This did not seem to be on top of any male interviewee’s mind.
I. Introduction
Ambition plays a crucial role in shaping individuals' career trajectories. Expressing ambition is one of the key deciding factors that play a part in whether or not talent gets promoted in organisations. In life sciences, equal numbers of men and women enter organisations at (junior) professional level, but in the pipeline towards the more influential positions, female talent tends to lose out. Literature suggests that women tend to express their ambition more in terms of ‘doing a good job and working hard’ whilst men focus more on ‘reaching certain positions and clearly expressing this goal’. This study aims to investigate if and how gender influences ambition within young professionals in the field of life sciences.
II. Methods
Data was collected through interviews with attendees at the BCF Career Event for life sciences, on May 24th in Utrecht (the Netherlands). The respondents were approached by the interviewer in waiting lines or during their lunch or coffee break. They were asked to rate their ambition level (not, a little, moderately, very much) and how they would define ambition. Then they were asked to provide insights into their career goals, by answering three open questions. ‘What do you want to achieve in your career? Where would you like to be in 5 years? Where would you like to be in 10 years?’ The data was analyzed qualitatively to identify common themes and quantitatively to compare gender differences.
III. Results
Demographic
In total 34 attendees were interviewed, of which 19 were women and 15 were men. Aged between 21 and 34 and educational levels ranging from Bachelor to Master and PhD, and one Postdoc. The average age of the women is 25, the men are on average three years older, 28. 74% of the respondents have a Dutch nationality (of which 15% have an additional nationality or different cultural background: French, Marroquin, Egyptian, Iranian) and 26% have other nationalities (Irish, English, Turkish, Indian, Spanish, Norwegian).
Women are not shy to call themselves ambitious
Most respondents describe themselves as ‘moderately’ or ‘very much’ ambitious (see Figure 1). If asked how ambitious they are 60% of the men say ‘moderately’ and 27 % say ‘very much’. 42 % of females place themselves in the category ‘moderately’ and 42 % go for ‘very much’. This leaves the women over-represented in the category ‘very much ambitious’.
Figure 1
In agreement about what ambition means
Overall, the interviewed men and women seem in agreement as to what ambition means (see Figure 2). Terms like ‘Drive/passion’, ‘Development/growth’, ‘Goals’ and ‘Hard work’ were used by them the most. Among these terms, the most frequently named one by females was ‘Drive/passion’ (53%) and ‘Developing/Growth’ (47%) for men For 27 % of the males, ambition is related to moving forward or upward. This was not mentioned by females. Some females (11%) associated ambition with competitiveness, but this was not mentioned by any male respondents. Equal amounts of males and females feel that ambition is about results (females 16%; males 13%).
Figure 2
The graph represents the words that were used by multiple respondents to describe ambition. Other words that were additionally mentioned by only one or two people were: dreams, direction, accountability, energy, enthusiasm, surround yourself with good people, lonely, power, pressure, freedom, focus, network, self-confidence, independency, and realism.
Career goals
When asked ‘What do you want to achieve in your career?’ Where would you want to be in 5-to-10 years time?’ the respondents mentioned general themes and types of jobs or both.
Figure 3
The top three most mentioned career goals for both men and women are: ‘making a difference’, ‘work happiness’ and ‘leadership position’. Although for women the importance of being able to make a difference (contribute to society, get results to patients, help science progress) is more clearly defined than for men. A clear majority of the women (68%) mentions this theme, while this rate stays at 40% for the men.
Work happiness is an important theme for roughly a third of the population, with hardly significant differences for men and women. The participants of this study were not an exception to this argument. The respondents aim for having fun and feeling energetic at work and having good working relations with colleagues.
Roughly a third of both genders mention a leadership position as a career goal. The way in which males and females express this aspiration is similar: some use very generic terms like ‘leading people’ or ‘a leading role’, and some are very specific ‘CEO/CTO’ or ‘BU manager’ (see Figure 4).
Figure 4
Comparison
of what females and males say if they express the aspiration for a leadership
position.
A less mentioned goal, and with no significant differences between female and male respondents, is the aim to earn a decent living.
Strikingly, it is mostly men that mention entrepreneurship (own start-up) as a career goal. However, we need to take into account that these aspiring male entrepreneurs are all between 30 and 34 years of age. Consequently, two of them have already finished their PhD’s a year or two years ago. This age group was not represented amongst the female interviewees, who were on average three years younger than the males (25 years compared to 28, the oldest female respondent is 29). The only female who considered a start-up (23 years old) was also aiming for positions like CEO or CTO.
Apart from leadership positions and entrepreneurship, some other roles were specified: teacher/lecturer (female), undergraduate role in academia (male) and programmer in bioinformatics (male). Two of the respondents were not able to formulate an answer in response to the question about career goals, they were both men.
All in all, the differences in expressed career goals are not massively different if we compare the responses from the men and women (apart from the results of the entrepreneurship question).
An interesting outcome is that when the females were asked about their career goals in 5 or 10 years, this prompted 27% of the females to mention another life goal: raising a family. One woman (‘moderately ambitious’) had a clear idea of how to achieve a balance between this life goal and her career aspirations: a part-time job in education. The others (one ‘moderately’ and two ‘very much’ ambitious) merely expressed this as a worry or a challenge. Notably, none of the men spontaneously mentioned any concerns about combining their career goals with family life.
Limitations
As the respondents were not selected through a fully randomized process and the number of respondents is limited, the results cannot be generalized to all professionals in life sciences, and we need to be careful to address variances found between the groups as significant.
Conclusion and Implications
Women do not seem hesitant to call themselves ambitious when compared to men. The women involved in this study expressed slightly higher ambition levels than the men.
When asked about their career goals, the men and women often name common themes. The theme most frequently mentioned by both sexes is ‘making a difference’, whereas women stress the importance of this even more than men. ‘Work happiness’ is also an important theme for young people who start their career in life sciences as is the aspiration for a leadership position.
It seems that a considerable part of young female talent is ready to invest a lot of passion and hard work in their career as long as they feel that they do meaningful work, they can contribute to the greater good, have interesting work and nice colleagues. As much as their male counterparts, young female talents are also looking for leadership responsibilities.
If we want to use this leadership potential amongst women, it is important that we promote them to their first leadership position early in their careers, and not keep them in professional or supporting roles for too long. And for women, it is important that they understand the importance of getting some leadership experience under their belt and actively ask for an opportunity to gain leadership skills (as there is a subconscious tendency in organisations to direct women towards specialist or supporting roles). If they miss out on leadership experience early in their career, they will have a disadvantage competing with men for leadership positions further down the road.
Also, an interesting aspect is to see how does the expression of ambition and career goals by women translate into the workplace? In the setting of the study, everybody was approached by an interviewer who was clearly interested in their answers and waited calmly until respondents had gathered their thoughts. Quite a few of the men and women who were interviewed struggled with giving clear answers, and sometimes needed to think long and hard, which is not surprising as they are at the start of their careers and lack the frame of reference that more senior professionals have.
At the workplace it is important to pro-actively demonstrate ambition, clearly communicate career goals and communicate your accomplishments to back up your ambition. It would interesting to see if men have a different communication strategy than women once they entered organisations.
This study also illustrates that women (still) feel more responsibility for balancing career goals with raising a family, than men. Organisations could encourage them to start discussing this topic at home at a very early stage and to help them think of other solutions than significantly dropping the number of working hours (the mainstream ‘accepted’ solution for working moms in the Netherlands), and find other solutions that have less impact on their careers.
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