Ambitious Woman Quotes

Nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, teacher's prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. To be admired, loved, and respected. To have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman, and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. It is natural to think of it, Meg, right to hope and wait for it, and wise to prepare for it, so that when the happy time comes, you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy. My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world, marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.

The Trump marriage veered furthest away from my concept of the union — and surprised me most as a student of American politics. Donald and Melania seem to inhabit separate realms and to come together when necessary, when one could not move forward without the other. The presidency was one instance in which they were forced into a joint undertaking. If my choice of language sounds businesslike, that’s because that’s how I’ve come to view the Trumps. Having learned more about each partner’s history, I believe they are two highly ambitious individuals who benefit from their partnership. It’s a transaction: he gains a beautiful woman on his arm, a solid-seeming marriage, a son, and a savvy adviser. She gains wealth and international cachet.

If she is efficient and capable or ambitious, it is assumed that she has failed to find satisfaction as a normal woman, even to the extent of implying a glandular abnormality or sexual perversion.

They think the recipe for a 'home-maker' is- a woman who isn't smart enough, lacks skills and above all isn't ambitious enough! Well she is every bit as smart as the woman who puts on a suit to go to work in a man's world to prove- times have changed! She is every bit as intelligent!

An ambitious woman never takes seriously men's compliments.

There is not much future in men being friends with a great woman although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is usually even less future with truly ambitious women writers.

Active or ambitious women were not only rare but often evil. Wonder Woman flipped this paradigm by embodying the strength, assertiveness, and independence usually associated with bad girls and villains in a positive heroic light. The Golden Age Wonder Woman was a blatant rejection of the good girl/bad girl binary and even offered a critique of the good girl role.

Whose interest does egg freezing serve? The woman's or that of an ambitious, still pretty unforgiving culture that doesn't really ever see childbearing for female employees as convenient?

That is, the more successful a man is, the more likable he becomes. But with a woman, it’s the exact opposite. The more successful and ambitious a woman is, the less likeable she becomes.

Be smart, but not too smart. Be beautiful, but not so pretty as to make other females mad. Be successful, but not bossy or overly ambitious. Nobody likes a mouthy brown woman. Be a declawed kitten.

So, what happens in the world is that everybody is fighting somebody. One man is lesser than another man. There is no love, there is no consideration, there is no thought. Each man wants to become somebody. A member of parliament wants to become the leader of the parliament, to become the prime minister, and so on and on and on. There is perpetual fighting, and our society is one constant struggle of one man against another, and this struggle is called the ambition to be something. Old people encourage you to do that. You must be ambitious, you must be something, you must marry a rich man or a rich woman, you must have the right kind of friends. So, the older generation, those who are frightened, those who are ugly in their hearts, try to make you like them, and you also want to be like them because you see the glamour of it all. When the governor comes, everybody bows...

The other problem is that she hasn’t arrived.” “Oh, yeah? And who is she?” “Well, she is a remarkable, funny, classy woman who can say the word fuck without being trashy. She makes me laugh, is ambitious, loves me because I’m nice, not in spite of it, and is as nice in return. She is simply enchanting.” “Shooting for the stars there, aren’t you, pal?” “Shouldn’t we all?” I didn’t know anymore, although I utterly envied his romanticism.

Katherine of Aragon was a staunch but misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves a good-humoured woman who jumped at the chance of independence; Katherine Howard an empty-headed wanton; and Katherine Parr a godly matron who was nevertheless all too human when it came to a handsome rogue.

Women give men a place to go. A man is a useless piece of equipment whose purpose is lost if it were not for women... It's like this. A man might go out and get a job, but only for someplace to go during the day. And he's only working that job to give the money to his wife. And then, if he does really well...to buy her good jewelry. And only because she asks for it. Diamonds aren't a man's idea. The first woman sent the first man into a hole in the ground, and when he emerged with the first diamond she looked at it and said, 'It's too small. Dig farther." Men are not ambitious outside of their desire to impress women. A woman, in return, gives a man's life shape. A context. A place to go. It's very simple.

They tried to stop her, but they failed miserably. They overlooked her, tried to discourage her, and sabotage her, but she persevered through it all with her head held high. They talked behind her back and plotted against her, but they didn’t realize that they were messing with an unstoppable, resilient Black Queen. She’s ambitious, intelligent, self-confident, and bold. She’s a Phenomenal Black Queen that didn’t have to compromise her integrity to get ahead. She’s genuinely happy, successful, and free to be herself. She can, she does, she wins!

Suddenly she thought that these men believed feeling itself a disease, something to be cut out like a rotten appendix. Cold, calculating, ambitious, believing themselves rational and superior, they chased the crouching female animal through the brain with a scalpel. From an early age she had been told that what she felt was unreal and didn’t matter. Now they were about to place in her something that would rule her feelings like a thermostat

Black Barbie? Nah… I’m an unapologetic Exquisite Black Queen who’s intelligent, creative, courageous, confident, ambitious, and authentic. My beauty is just a bonus!

Because a man who argues is ambitious, but a woman who argues is just a bitch.

Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man's happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl—and for the woman an attractive man—are the prizes they are after. 'Attractive' usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious—today he has to be social and tolerant—in order to be an attractive 'package'. At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one's own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.

If I was a man, everybody would marvel at my aggression. I’d be called a go-getter, ambitious. People would respect me. However, I am a woman, so I am controlling and bossy and dictatorial.

I was a little girl with big dreams. I wanted to be a star like Madonna, Dolly Parton, or Whitney Houston. I had simpler dreams too, dreams that seemed even harder to achieve and that felt too ambitious to say out loud: I wanted my dad to stop drinking. I want my mom to stop yelling. I want everyone to be okay.

I remember a study that was done in the seventies (a study I've been trying to find unsuccessfully since the advent of the internet). It was a study of psychologists and psychiatrists, not of patients. They filled out three questionnaires, true or false questions. One was for the traits of a healthy man, next was for traits of a healthy woman, the third for traits of a healthy human being. The traits of a healthy man and human were the same, but a healthy woman was very different. Completely different. You know--softer, sweeter, more empathetic, less self-centered, less ambitious, more dependent. And these were the people who were treating people who were trying to live healthy lives.

The casual assumption – even by people who’d never think of themselves as sexist – that an attractive and ambitious woman must be using the one to further the other. She’s faced it enough times in her own career, but she’d been hoping dinosaur attitudes like that were finally dying out.

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on.

When a man’s ambitious, it’s called drive. When a woman’s ambitious, it’s careerism and she’s a bitch.

Hence, though there can be no rule in so capricious a passion, early love is frequently ambitious in choosing its object; or, which comes to the same, selects her (as in the case of Saint Cecilia aforesaid) from a situation that gives fair scope for le beau ideal, which the reality of intimate and familiar life rather tends to limit and impair. I knew a very accomplished and sensible young man cured of a violent passion for a pretty woman, whose talents were not equal to her face and figure, by being permitted to bear her company for a whole afternoon.

Caroline, or Sister Carrie, as she had been half affectionately termed by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with the fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness and an eye alight with certain native intelligence, she was a fair example of the middle American class—two generations removed from the emigrant. Books were beyond her interest—knowledge a sealed book. In the intuitive graces she was still crude. She could scarcely toss her head gracefully. Her hands were almost ineffectual. The feet, though small, were set flatly. And yet she was interested in her charms, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things. A half-equipped little knight she was, venturing to reconnoitre the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off supremacy, which should make it prey and subject—the proper penitent, grovelling at a woman's slipper.

What I’m saying is this: Given that I don’t have a choice, given that death is an unavoidable and final reality, I’m finding ways, not just to accept it, but to use it to give my life meaning. The finality of death is giving my life motivation and focus. It’s driving me to accomplish things that I’d put off indefinitely without it. Death has turned me from a happy-go-lucky slacker chick with some vague creative goals but no real plans for reaching them, into an ambitious, determined woman with a clear sense of what she wants to do with her life and what she needs to do to make it happen.

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on. You’ll labour over this manuscript of mine, reading and rereading, picking nits as you go, developing the fascinated but also bored hatred biographers so often come to feel for their subjects. How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

Ask a woman if she’s ambitious and she’ll look at you as if you just asked whether she sticks pins in puppies for fun. Ask a woman if she’s competitive and she’ll look at you as if you suggested that she’s a hooker.

In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow. In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural.

Her outer beauty is just a bonus, but it is her inner beauty that’s most captivating. She’s loving, caring, kindhearted, empathetic, and genuine. She’s comfortable in her own skin, therefore, she’s able to compliment, celebrate, and build up others around her. She’s a quality Woman with a strong sense of self! She doesn’t need the spotlight, because she is the light wherever she goes. Smart, confident, ambitious, and fearless… Beautifully created from the inside out.

Strong women—especially if they elect to lead lives outside of the domestic sphere—are often depicted without appropriate context, are made to seem one-note (as if any of us could be defined by a single act in our personal history or a single aspect of personality), and are described with sexist labels. An intelligent, ambitious, outspoken woman is called “pushy,” “domineering,” “abrasive,” “hysterical,” “shrill,” etc., most often by men but sometimes by other women as well.

High-profile women who seek to rise are routinely criticised as being "too ambitious". What does "too ambitious even mean? It seems to mean that any woman who is ambitious is unseemly, over-the-top, too nakedly self-interested to be trusted. Men are often described as ambitious, ofcourse, but rarely with the qualifier "too". It seems primarily reserved for ambitious women.Sits not very surprising that even very successful women are often reluctant to describe themselves as ambitious.

As the concept of home became clearer, women became smaller. For smart, ambitious women with no outlet for their skills except their children, motherhood and homemaking became all-consuming identities. Dalla Costa and James write that women decorate their homes because their homes are the only proof they exist. The same logic could be used for pouring one's life into children. Children become a woman's reason for being, her proof of existence. As if her own existence weren't enough. (Pg 47)

If there is, indeed, an anti-Marian spirit, what might it look like? Well, a woman in its grip would not value children. She would be bawdy, vulgar, and angry. She would rage against the idea of anything resembling humble obedience or self-sacrifice for others. She would be petulant, shallow, catty, and overly sensuous. She would also be self-absorbed, manipulative, gossipy, anxious, and self-servingly ambitious. In short, she would be everything that Mary is not. She would bristle especially at the idea of being a virgin or a mother.

Cyrilly expected Sylvia – as an intelligent and ambitious young woman – to walk around pale-mouthed and flat-shoed. She saw intellectual inclinations and a taste for fashion as mutually exclusive and assumed that Sylvia would not mind missing fashion shows to work late in the office.

I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist. Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men

an ambitious woman with her sights set on a very competitive residency, made me promise, tearfully, that if she became pregnant I would support her decision to terminate the pregnancy and not ask her to bring a fetus to term. She had worked hard her whole life and wanted to become an orthopedic surgeon more than anything. Moved by her anxiety that I might fail to be a loving support to her, and by my own strong desire to defy the stereotype of the sexually irresponsible black man (even though nothing in my personal history indicated that I might conform to it), I easily agreed—an

into the enemy’s hands alive. That was what I dreaded. No, what hurt me very, very much was the lives of so many compañeros, fine compañeros, who weren’t ambitious for power in the least. All they wanted was enough to live on, enough to meet their people’s needs. This reinforced my decision to fight.

I was a little girl with big dreams. I wanted to be a star like Madonna, Dolly Parton, or Whitney Houston. I had simpler dreams, too, dreams that seemed even harder to achieve and that felt too ambitious to say out loud: I want my dad to stop drinking. I want my mom to stop yelling. I want everyone to be okay.

We don’t raise our daughters to be as ambitious as our sons,” she said. One reason, she noted, was that “success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. As a man gets more powerful and successful, he is better liked. As a woman gets more powerful and successful, she is less liked.

At first glance, the stewardess appears to have been a reflection of conservative postwar gender roles—an impeccable airborne incarnation of the mythical homemaker of the 1950s who would happily abandon work to settle down with Mr. Right. A high-flying expert at applying lipstick, warming baby bottles, and mixing a martini, the stewardess was popularly imagined as the quintessential wife to be. Dubbed the “typical American girl,” this masterful charmer—known for pampering her mostly male passengers while maintaining perfect poise (and straight stocking seams) thirty thousand feet above sea level—became an esteemed national heroine for her womanly perfection. But while the the stewardess appears to have been an airborne Donna Reed, a closer look reveals that she was also popularly represented as a sophisticated, independent, ambitious career woman employed on the cutting edge of technology. This iconic woman in the workforce was in a unique position to bring acceptance and respect to working women by bridging the gap between the postwar domestic ideal and wage work for women. As both the apotheosis of feminine charm and American careerism, the stewardess deftly straddled the domestic ideal and a career that took her far from home. Ultimately, she became a crucial figure in paving the way for feminism in America.

Well, I once lived in a town full of ambitious people, people who aspired to having, be it wealth or power. It was an unhappy town. Your cause may be more noble than theirs, but nevertheless it is important to know the difference between having and being. If desire burns too strong in a man it will consume him. A man who says he will not rest until he has made a certain amount of money will not rest even then, for his desire will drive him to greater wealth. A man who says he will not be happy until he has obtained a certain woman will seek another once he has had her. I know this to be true because I was such a man. If you are not happy now you may never be happy.

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. you'll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, [...] frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on.

We zijn inferieure schepselen, net goed genoeg om te jongen. We hebben eierstokken, moeten ons er iedere maand bij neerleggen dat we bloeden, we zijn afhankelijk van de maan. Onze hersenen zijn minder ontwikkeld dan die van onze metgezellen en onze lichaamskracht is geringer. In alle omstandigheden zijn we emotioneler. Als een vrouw ziet dat een rivale mooiere schoentjes draagt dan zij zelf, zal ze niet ophouden de ander omlaag te halen en te kwetsen. Kun je je twee mannen voorstellen die elkaar verfoeien vanwege hun molières? Mannen wedijveren met elkaar op het niveau van geld, ambitie en intelligentie. Zij hebben het vermogen tot afstand nemen en onthechting, terwijl vrouwen iedere beheersing verliezen zodra ze een poederdoos of een ring zien. Nooit zal een vrouw een Michelangelo, een Bach of een Palladio zijn. Grote filosofen met een rok aan bestaan niet. Hoe wil je dat ze systemen ontwerpen zoals Kant, Hegel of Marx? Een dergelijk abstraherend vermogen kan niet ontstaan in de geest van een pop.

Unattractive, like a selfish woman. Ugly, like an ambitious one. Like one who chose to punish a good man for not being the right man, who left because staying was too boring, too painful, too hard. Like a woman who had to be a weapon because she couldn’t be anything else. “Nothing.” Only the future loss of her desirability, the collapse of her personhood. The first glimpse of an empire steadily falling to unseen ruin. The fate she already knew was coming, the punishment she’d always known she deserved. What timing!

I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. To be admired, loved, and respected. To have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman, and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. It is natural to think of it, Meg, right to hope and wait for it, and wise to prepare for it, so that when the happy time comes, you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy. My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world, marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.

The other thing that’s happened with writing is that I’m not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years ago, I feared that sitting down with paper and pencil revealed too much desire and that for such ambition I would be punished. My vocabulary would contract anorexia, ideas would be born autistic, even titles would not come to flirt with me anymore. I suppose this was tied to that internal judge, the serpent who eats her own tail. She insinuates you’re not good enough; you believe her and try less, ratifying her assessment; so you try even less; and on and on. This snake survives on your dying. Finally, now, the elided words of my wisest writing teacher, the poet David Wojahn, make sense. “Be ambitious,” he said, “for the work.” Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway.

We are told to dare to dream and then follow our dreams. But once we start, they turn around and tell us we are too ambitious. It is very difficult for a woman to have it all; the career, a happy marriage, and even happier children. For a man, it is a piece of cake. He will have his flourishing career, a picture-happy family, and throw in an occasional mistress or two, if he can afford it. You try such antics and society will bury you alive. A woman’s place is by her husband, to obey and respect him, to never overshadow him. He leads, she follows. But I ask, what if my vision is much larger than even the man himself? What then? Should a woman have to choose? Abandon all her dreams and aspirations just because? Or should she follow her dreams and say goodbye to any kind of personal life she dreamt of? You tell me.

Carolina Maria de Jesus wrote in her diary: 'Everyone has an ideal in life. Mine is to be able to read.' She is ambitious, but it is a strange ambition for a woman. She wants learning. She wants the pleasure of reading and writing. Men ask her to marry but she suspects that they will interfere with her reading and writing. They will resent the time she takes alone. They will resent the focus of her attention elsewhere. They will resent her concentration and they will resent her self-respect. They will resent her pride in herself and her pride in her unmediated relationship to a larger world of ideas, descriptions, facts. Her neighbors see her poring over books, or with pen and paper in hand, amidst the garbage and hunger of the favela. Her ideal makes her a pariah: her desire to read makes her more an outcast than if she sat in the street putting fistfuls of nails into her mouth. Where did she get her ideal? No one offered it to her. Two thirds of the world’s illiterates are women. To be fucked, to birth children, one need not know how to read. Women are for sex and reproduction, not for literature. But women have stories to tell. Women want to know. Women have questions, ideas, arguments, answers. Women have dreams of being in the world, not merely passing blood and heaving wet infants out of laboring wombs. 'Women dream,' Florence Nightingale wrote in Cassandra, 'till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. . . . Later in life, they neither desire nor dream, neither of activity, nor of love, nor of intellect.

Not as the prince stepped onto the small island where the queen was standing. Not as Aelin turned toward Rowan, and the only flame that remained was a crown of fire atop her head. Lorcan watched in silence as Rowan slid a hand over her waist, the other cupping the side of her face, and kissed his queen. Embers stirred her unbound hair as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed close. A golden crown of flame flickered to life atop Rowan's head- the twin to the one Lorcan had seen burning that day at Mistward. He knew Whitethorn. He knew the prince wasn't ambitious- not in the way that immortals could be. He likely would have loved the woman if she'd been ordinary. But this power... In his wasteland of a soul, Lorcan felt that tug. Hated it. It was why Whitethorn had strode to her- why Fenrys was now hallway across the plain, dazed, attention wholly fixed on where they stood, tangled in each other.

I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. To be admired, loved, and respected. To have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman, and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. It is natural to think of it, Meg, right to hope and wait for it, and wise to prepare for it, so that when the happy time comes, you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy. My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world, marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace." "Poor

Roth blinked, then nodded slowly. “I hate making them. I haven’t gotten where I am on the job by indulging my temper or apologizing for it. Neither, I imagine, have you. Women are still more closely scrutinized in the department and more strictly judged.” “That may be true, Captain. I don’t let it concern me.” “Then you’re a better woman than I, Dallas, or a great deal less ambitious. Because it burns the living hell out of me.” She inhaled, hissed the breath out through her teeth. “My coming at you as I have has been an emotional reaction, an indulgence again, that was both inappropriate and ill-advised. I’m going to tell you that I overreacted to Kohli’s death because I liked him, very much. I believe I overreacted to Mills because I disliked him. Very much.” She glanced back at the car. “He was a son of a bitch, a mean-spirited man who made no secret that, in his opinion, women should be having babies, cooking pies, and not wearing a badge. He disliked blacks, Jews, Asians . . . hell, he disliked everyone who wasn’t just what he was: an overfed white male. But he was my cop, and I want whoever opened him up that way.

Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“ “Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?” “Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.” “No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.” From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck. Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.” “Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But-but what about supper?” he sputtered. “You may bring it up to us.” Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man. “What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.” “You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?” “Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?” Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!” Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.” Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.

Our time together is drawing short, my reader. Possibly you will view these pages of mine as a fragile treasure box, to be opened with the utmost care. Possibly you will tear them apart, or burn them: that often happens to words. Perhaps you’ll be a student of history, in which case I hope you’ll make something useful of me: a warts-and-all portrait, a definitive account of my life and times, suitably footnoted; though if you don’t accuse me of bad faith I will be astonished. Or, in fact, not astonished: I will be dead, and the dead are hard to astonish. I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on. You’ll labour over this manuscript of mine, reading and rereading, picking nits as you go, developing the fascinated but also bored hatred biographers so often come to feel for their subjects. How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

So what kind of woman are you looking for? Let me guess. Professional. Sophisticated. Classy. Intelligent. Basically, Lucia but younger, or do you like a little Mrs. Robinson between the sheets?" She took another bite of her hot dog. Was there any better food? "My relationship with Lucia is strictly professional, but yes, I'd be interested in someone similar." "So, you want a mini-me," she teased. "I mean a mini-you. Not me. Obviously. Lucia is pretty much the opposite of me, which is another reason I knew that job wouldn't work out." "You have ketchup on your cheek." He took a napkin and gently dabbed it at the corner of her mouth. Desire flooded her veins followed by a wave of desolation. She could easily fall for a man like Jay. Smart, handsome, ambitious, successful, and yet she sensed a longing in him, a secret Jay waiting to be free. "Is it gone?" Her voice came out in a whisper. He leaned in and studied her with a serious intensity that took her breath away. He was so close she could see the gentle dip of his chin, the dark stubble of his five-o'clock shadow even though it couldn't be much past four o'clock. His lips were firm and soft, his mouth the perfect size for kissing. She drew in his scent: pine and mountains and the rich, earthy scent of the soil she'd turned in the garden when her family was whole and she never had to wonder whose house she was in when she woke up in the morning.

Poirot asked: ‘Whatdo you see so plainly? The witnesses? The counsel? The judge? The accused standing in the dock?’ Fogg said quietly: ‘That’s the reason, of course! You’ve put your finger on it. I shall always seeher…Funny thing, romance. She had the quality of it. I don’t know if she was really beautiful…She wasn’t very young-tired looking-circles under her eyes. But it all centered round her. The interest-the drama. And yet, half the time,she wasn’t there. She’d gone away somewhere, quite far away-just left her body there, quiescent, attentive, with the little polite smile on her lips. She was all half tones, you know, lights and shades. And yet, with it all, she was more alive than the other-that girl with the perfect body, and the beautiful face, and the crude young strength. I admired Elsa Greer because she had guts, because she could fight, because she stood up to her tormentors and never quailed! But I admired Caroline Crale because she didn’t fight, because she retreated into her world of half lights and shadows. She was never defeated because she never gave battle.’ He paused: ‘I’m only sure of one thing. She loved the man she killed. Loved him so much that half of her died with him…’ Mr Fogg, K.C., paused and polished his glasses. ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘I seem to be saying some very strange things! I was quite a young man at the time, you know. Just an ambitious youngster. These things make an impression. But all the same I’m sure that Caroline Crale was a very remarkable woman. I shall never forget her. No-I shall never forget her…

At Prim’s side was a woman with a politician’s face (supercilious, sanctimonious, vacuous, terrified, smarmy, disingenuous, small-minded, vengeful, coldhearted, opportunistic, petty, deceitful, evidence-ignoring, bullying, arrogant, smug, obnoxious, contemptuous, ignorant, reactionary, condescending, patronizing, blinkered, vacillating, corrupt, morally bankrupt, blackmailing, blackmailable, dodgy, wavering, backstabbing, bought, sold, stinking rich, unqualified, sleazy, teeth-capped, kneecapping, corporate-owned, hate-mongering, fear-mongering, button-pushing, deflecting, evading, brazening, hit-song-stealing, nostalgia-worshipping, distorting, no-tax-returning, tax-evading, offshore-holding, shady-business-partnering, election-stealing, arms-dealing, collateral-damage signing-offing, hypocritically family-value bleating but sexually deviant-ing, honest-forthright-honorable—a paragon-of-integrity [lying], spiteful, unreliable, Teflon-coated, Saran-wrapped, white-breaded, xenophobic, cynical, uncomprehending of irony-ing, witless, thin-skinned, insecure, unfulfilled, blindly ambitious, power-hungry, sadistic, self-righteous, incapable of contemplation-ing, prevaricating, privileged, pampered, Ivy League–educated [in something useless like political science, economics, or law], pompous, ego-centered, centered, narcissistic, shallow, bullshitting, manipulative, backtracking, quote-denying, what-climate-changing?, alternate-truth-ing, prejudice-feeding, hate-inciting, racketeering, blame-shifting, warmongering, autocratic, megalomaniacal, possibly sociopathic, blathering, self-serving, unreliable, cliquey, cagey, crafty, cunning, daft, dull, ethically destitute, irredeemable, oil-burning, fracking [but NIMBY], self-pay-raising, self-congratulating, self-aggrandizing, but all that was just first impressions so who can say?).

Unattractive, like a selfish woman. Ugly, like an ambitious one. Like one who chose to punish a good man for not being the right man, who left because staying was too boring, too painful, too hard. Like a woman who had to be a weapon because she couldn’t be anything else. thing, for one chance— Parisa tousled her hair, switching her part from one side to the other. She didn’t have a bad side. —but I’m done being grateful! I’m done trying to make myself suitable for this family, for this God, for this life. I’m done being small, I’ve outgrown the person who needed you to save her, I don’t even know who she is anymore— She pouted at the mirror and started again, pinching her cheeks to see the color come and go. —and I want more, so much more— Lip balm. Mascara. Lips softer, eyes wider, be something different, something else. —I just want to live, Nas! Just let me live! What was the point of reliving the past? She was hunting her invisible nemeses, grappling for power, finding new methods of control. She should be busy, too busy being the most dangerous person in this or any world to think about why she’d been such an easy target for Atlas Blakely, a man in need of weapons just to make a universe that he could stand. But now— Now she was thinking about Nasser, as if it mattered at all what kind of person she’d been over a decade ago. Just an hour of your time, now and then. That’s all I ask. I know, I know, I’m asking a lot more from you inside my head, but that’s not fair—doesn’t it matter what I choose to put in front of you? Someday maybe you’ll understand that there’s a difference between what a person thinks and who they choose to be— A glint caught her eye from her reflection. A brief, unnatural sparkle in the placid lake of her appearance, the consistency of her beauty, the easy grace she always wore. She leaned forward, forgetting her internal monologue, letting it collapse. Someday the view will be different, eshgh, and I hope you see me in a softer light— “Parisa?” Dalton leaned against the frame of the bathroom door. In his left hand was one of her dresses. In his right hand was her phone. “I don’t care if you want to see your husband. Sorry—Nasser. If you want me to call him that, I will. I suppose you’re right, anyway, you’ll need to see him, because if the Society could find evidence of him in your past then the Forum surely can as well, and so can Atlas. And so can anyone else who wants you dead.” Another pause as Dalton set her phone back on the bathroom counter. “I replied to the physicist for you as well. I think you’ll need to find out what he plans to do about the archives, or at least keep track of what Atlas is doing at the house. Atlas is going to win over both the physicists unless you can convince one of them to do it differently. “What is it?” Dalton asked, frowning at her silence. His gaze traced the placement of her fingers, which had been parsing the thickness of her hair. “I—” Parisa was caught somewhere between laughing and crying. “I found a gray hair.” “So?” Laughter, definitely laughter. It escaped her in something of a rueful bray. Unattractive, like a selfish woman. Ugly, like an ambitious one. Like one who chose to punish a good man for not being the right man, who left because staying was too boring, too painful, too hard. Like a woman who had to be a weapon because she couldn’t be anything else. “Nothing.” Only the future loss of her desirability, the collapse of her personhood. The first glimpse of an empire steadily falling to unseen ruin. The fate she already knew was coming, the punishment she’d always known she deserved. What timing!

It cannot be said that she was a bad woman, though she had in her time done an indescribable amount of evil. She had endeavoured to do good, failing partly by ignorance and partly from the effects of an unbridled, ambitious temper.

Literature is my religion, and I’ve learned from literature that all of us human beings are flawed, and I’ve also learned that all of us have the possibility of redemption. We can remake the world. I believe that. We can remake masculinity. We can change it from this narrow cage that traps men into an inhumane idea. We can expect men to be vulnerable. We can give men the language of emotion. We can teach men to respect the autonomy of women. We can encourage little boys to cry. We can create a world where women can be full sexual beings, where slut shaming never happens, where women face no backlash for being bold, for being angry, or for being aggressive, for being ambitious. We can create a world where there are many women in real positions of power because representation matters... We can make a world where there is no such thing as a pregnancy penalty for a woman who works. We can make a world where we all collectively support those human beings whose bodies do the difficult and physical work of ensuring that the human species does not become extinct. I have a two and a half year old daughter. And I really hope that she lives in a world that is better than the world that I live in.

Instead I wanted to talk about what it means to be an ambitious woman and what it often costs us. I wanted to explore how the media treats women and how women treat one another. I wanted to show how difficult it still is for a woman to run for office even though we all know we need more of us in government.

hose watching Isabella process through the cold streets of Segovia could not know that they were witnessing the first steps of a queen destined to become the most powerful woman Europe had seen since Roman times. ‘This queen of Spain, called Isabella, has had no equal on this earth for 500 years,’ one awestruck visitor from northern Europe would eventually proclaim, admiring the fear and loyalty she provoked among the lowliest of Castilians and the mightiest of Grandees.4 This was not hyperbole. Europe had limited experience of queens regnant, and even less of successful ones. Few of those who followed Isabella have had such a lasting impact. Only Elizabeth I of England, Archduchess María Theresa of Austria, Russia’s Catherine the Great (outshining a formidable predecessor, the Empress Elizabeth) and Britain’s Queen Victoria can rival her, each in their own era. All faced the challenges of being a female ruler in an otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated world and all had long, transformative reigns, leaving legacies that would be felt for centuries. All faced the challenges of being a female ruler in an otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated world and all had long, transformative reigns, leaving Only Isabella did this by leading a country as it emerged from the troubled late middle ages, harnessing the ideas and tools of the early Renaissance to start transforming a fractious, ill-disciplined nation into a European powerhouse with a clear-minded and ambitious monarchy at its centre. She was, in other words, the first in that still-small club of great European queens. To some she remains the greatest.

Gretchen VanTreese (from The Crimson Corset) is easily the most heartless character I’ve ever written. Ruthless, self-obsessed, and ambitious beyond her means, she is the epitome of greed and overindulgence. This is woman who keeps handsome young men as pets, a staff of venom-addicted employees to do her daytime bidding, and a basement full of bound human delicacies.

make of Maria Lynch, with her freckled nose, inquisitive eyes and long hair tied up childishly in a ponytail, always dressed smartly. She looked eighteen, but having served fifteen years in the force, she was closer to thirty-five. Enthusiastic without overdoing it. She was aware that Lynch was super ambitious and Lottie had no intention of falling into the female rivalry trap. But she had to admit to a slight jealousy of the domestic stability her detective possessed. Lynch was married, she assumed happily. It was said her husband cooked, hoovered, brought their two small children to school before he went to work and all that shite. ‘It’s an absolute tip in there. I don’t know how the woman survived in such a dump,’ Lynch said, wiping dust from her pressed navy trousers. Lottie

This, then, was the one thing Christina had not figured on–the deadly, far-reaching killer instinct beneath his blank, non-assuming stare. And to make matters worse, LaForche, like Christina, had intrigues and subversions of his own, He was completely normal in all ways except for one detail. He had an insidious delectable kink–an exactingly outrageous idée fixe, a driving monomaniacal purpose behind his ambitious riddling hatred. Very soon, he would turn his warped facilities against her, focusing his vast malignant energies to destroy the ridiculous self-deified woman who abused and humiliated him so. --Felipe LaForche, Villain. The Lady and the Samurai

Few women would prefer an unemployed and rudderless man to an ambitious and successful one, all other things being even roughly equal; and few men would choose an obese, unattractive, and dull woman over a shapely, beautiful, sharp one.

These were the qualities that painted young me as smart and ambitious and young woman as trouble.

Human males, too, form alliances for gaining resources such as large game, political power within the group, ways to defend against the aggression of other coalitions of men, and sexual access to women.7 The survival and reproductive benefits derived from these coalitional activities constituted tremendous selection pressure over human evolutionary history for men to form alliances with other men. Since ancestral women did not hunt large game, declare war on other tribes, or attempt to forcibly capture men from neighboring bands, they did not experience equivalent selection pressure to form coalitions. Although women do form coalitions with other women for the care of the young and for protection from sexually aggressive men, these are weakened whenever a woman leaves her kin group to live with her husband and his clan. The combination of strong coalitions among men and somewhat weaker coalitions among women, according to Barbara Smuts, may have contributed historically to men’s dominance over women.9 My view is that women’s preferences for a successful, ambitious, and resource-capable mate coevolved with men’s competitive mating strategies, which include risk taking, status striving, derogation of competitors, coalition formation, and an array of individual efforts aimed at surpassing other men on the dimensions that women desire. The intertwining of these coevolved mechanisms in men and women created the conditions for men to dominate in the domain of resources. The origins of men’s control over resources is not simply an incidental historical footnote of passing curiosity. Rather, it has a profound bearing on the present, because it reveals some of the primary causes of men’s continuing control of resources. Women today continue to want men who have resources, and they continue to reject men who lack resources. These preferences are expressed repeatedly in dozens of studies conducted on tens of thousands of individuals in scores of countries worldwide. They are expressed countless times in everyday life. In any given year, the men whom women marry earn more than men of the same age whom women do not marry. Even professionally successful women who do not really need resources from a man are reluctant to settle for a mate who is less successful than they are. Women who earn more than their husbands seek divorce more often, although this trend appears to be changing, at least within America. Men continue to compete with other men to acquire the status and resources that make them desirable to women. The forces that originally caused the resource inequality between the genders—women’s mate preferences and men’s competitive strategies—are the same forces that contribute to maintaining resource inequality today. Feminists’ and evolutionists’ conclusions converge in their implication that men’s efforts to control female sexuality lie at the core of their efforts to control women. Our evolved sexual strategies account for why this occurs, and why control of women’s sexuality is a central preoccupation of men. Over the course of human evolutionary history, men who failed to control women’s sexuality—for example, by failing to attract a mate, failing to prevent cuckoldry, or failing to retain a mate—experienced lower reproductive success than men who succeeded in controlling women’s sexuality. We come from a long and unbroken line of ancestral fathers who succeeded in obtaining mates, preventing their infidelity, and providing enough benefits to keep them from leaving. We also come from a long line of ancestral mothers who granted sexual access to men who provided beneficial resources.

When asked “With respect to your job/career you would like to have, how important are the following to you?” The rating scale ranged from 1 (not important) to 7 (very important). Men exposed to young, attractive women rated “having a large income” to be 5.09, whereas men exposed to older, less attractive models rated it only 3.27—an astonishingly large effect. Similar differences occurred in rating the importance of “being financially successful.” A full 60 percent of the men exposed to young, attractive models described themselves as “ambitious,” compared to 9 percent of the men exposed to older, less-attractive models. Another study found that merely having a young woman in the same room caused men to increase the importance they attach to having material wealth (Roney, 2003). Similar effects have been found by others. Men “primed” with attractive images of women display more creativity, independence, and nonconformity, causing them to stand out from other men (Griskevicius, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006; Griskevicius, Goldstein, Mortensen, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006). Chinese men also increase risk taking when being observed by women (Shan et al., 2012). In short, when mating motives are “primed” by exposure to young, attractive women, a cascade of psychological shifts occurs in men such that they value and display precisely what women want and hence what men need to succeed in mate competition.

I knew I wanted to work though I am not a highly career-oriented and ambitious woman. I am very passionate about what I do and very determined.

A woman with strong character can be easily labelled as a bossy *itch while her male counterpart is a firm leader, only a woman can be punished for being ambitious while a male colleague ambition is a great box 9 talent demonstration

A woman is like a tea bag - you can tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

Is every woman you see someone designed to spend her life catering to someone else’s needs? This is the moment it finally truly lands that I will never outrun my gender. Of course on some level I’ve known that for years, but never so starkly. I will never overcome the belief that the presence of women means a slower, softer, weaker Amazon. There is nothing I can do to make these men any smarter or less blind, because they’re the norm and I’m a deviation. Or a deviant, a kidless mom, an outlier.

Where do I begin? I’m sharing this journey with you. I love you with my whole heart. You are my wonderful, vivacious, ambitious, gorgeous wife. I sometimes think back to that day on the tube. The woman in the scarlet lipstick and the black turtleneck, with the soft laugh. The look you gave me, that knowing half-smile, as if you knew we were already connected somehow. I wanted to be drawn into your world and I have been. I’ve loved being with you, married to you. You’ve been my everything.

want you to be famous as hell,” Melina said. “I want your stories out there, about people I’m not, and lives I’ll never live. But I want my work out there, too. Yes to Black theater and brown theater and playwrights with disabilities and queer musicals. Yes to all of it. But… I’m still here. I feel like I keep getting told: Step aside, it’s not your time yet.” Melina twisted her hands in her lap. “I was thinking so much about me, I forgot to think about you… or anyone else who’s still trying to make a place for themselves in this industry. I don’t know how to be ambitious and be an ally, Andre,” she said. “I don’t know how to advocate for myself as a woman without sounding petty or entitled. I just know that theater is about as postfeminist as it is postracial.

Most of those who lost their jobs were men, but government was one of the few options for professionally ambitious women, who could fall under suspicion for simply dressing unconventionally, sharing an apartment with another woman, or socializing in bars known as meeting places for lesbians. [regarding the government firings for homosexuality]

I have an image of a woman with a romantic kind of beauty and an orderly, logical mind.” “Hunter—” “Wait, I’m just fleshing her out. She’s ambitious, full of nerves, highly sensuous without being fully aware of it.” He could see her eyes change, growing as dark as the sky above them. “She’s caught in the middle of something she can’t explain or understand. Things happen around her and she’s finding it more and more difficult to distance herself from it. And there’s a man, a man she desires but can’t quite trust. He doesn’t offer her the logical explanations she wants, but the illogic he offers seems terrifyingly close to the truth. If she puts her trust in him, she has to turn her back on most of what she believes is fact. If she doesn’t, she’ll be alone.

Okay, so all a woman has to do is ignore society's expectations, be ambitious, sit at the table, work hard, and then it's smooth sailing all the way. What could possibly go wrong?

She entered the civil service, worked conscientiously, and reached the highest level available, tenure, with full pension. ‘Was this time when your apathy began?’ I asked. She admitted that this could be so. ‘Then, I think I know what you need,’ I ventured. ‘You need a goal. All your life you have been ambitious, and now suddenly you’ve reached your goal and cannot advance. But you have too much mental energy to stand still, you need new challenges, new areas of activity. To be well off is not enough, standing still does not satisfy human nature.’ The woman had listened attentively and was no longer uninterested. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘What I need is a goal. Now that you’ve said it, I know it is true. And here I thought you will analyze my entire childhood and trace my difficulties back to the divorce of my parents…’ We both laughed, and the ice was broken.” (Lukas,

You know, I’ve been hanging around your place, riding with you, throwing the stick for your dogs, and I never asked you about the husbands. Like, how many? And why you think it didn’t work out?” “What makes you think I feel like telling you?” she asked. “Aw, you’ll tell me,” he said. “You’re just that kinda gal. And I told you about my wife.” “Okay,” she said, still slapping sandwiches together. “The synopsis. The first one was fifteen years older than me, my agent. He’s still my agent—he married the talent, not the person I was. He was very ambitious for me, for us both. He still thinks I divorced him because of his age, but I divorced him because all he cared about was my career. I don’t think he could tell you my favorite color…” “Yellow,” Walt said. Her head snapped around and she stared at him. “Yellow,” she said. “That was easy,” he said. “It’s all around and you wear it a lot. Red’s important, too.” “Right,” she said, shocked. She shook herself. “Okay, number two hit, number three cheated, number four had a child he failed to mention, number five—” “All right, wait,” Walt said. “Is this going to go on for a real long time?” She grinned at him. “Didn’t you look it up on the Internet?” “I did not,” he said, almost insulted. “We’re stopping at five. He had a substance-abuse problem. I didn’t know about it beforehand, obviously. I tried to help, but I was in the way—he needed to be on his own. That’s when I decided that, really, I should quit doing that. Marrying. But please understand, it’s not all my fault—Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a reputation for long, sturdy relationships. I did the best I could.” “I have no doubt,” he said. “Do you say that because you have no doubt? Or are you being a sarcastic ass to a poor woman who had to go through five miserable husbands?” He chuckled. Then he slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek.

Black resistance caused lynchings to spike in the early 1890s. However, the White lynchers justified the spike in lynchings as corresponding to a spike in Black crime. This justification was accepted by a young W. E. B. Du Bois, by the middle-aged, ambitious principle of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington, and by a dying Frederick Douglass. It took a young antiracist Black woman to set these racist men straight. Mississippi-born Memphis journalist Ida B. Wells recoiled from the lynching of friends and the sheer number of lynchings during the peak of the era in 1892, when the number of Blacks lynched in the nation reached a whopping 255 souls. She released a blazing pamphlet in 1892 called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. From a sample of 728 lynching reports in recent years, Wells found that only about a third of lynching victims had “ever been charged with rape, to say nothing of those who were innocent of the charge.” White men were lying about Black-on-White rape, and hiding their own assaults of Black women, Wells raged.11

Well, then here we are,” Beth said. “We’ve got a couple of kids with a couple of kids on the way, and they clearly love each other. What are we going to do?” Susan took a sip of her martini. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to rest until I see them married.” Beth threw back her head and laughed loudly, earning a glance from Jack. “I love an ambitious woman. So, I have a favor to ask.” “Sure.” “I know you’ll be zipping down here the second the babies come and I know the mother’s mother gets special privileges. Let me come soon, please. I promise not to crowd the cabin and I’ll do all the shit work without getting in the way.” Susan looked up at the ceiling, thinking. Then she glanced back at Beth. “Give us three days. And I’ll split the snuggling and shit work with you.” Beth put a hand on her arm. “You are a good woman. I made my son-in-law’s mother wait a week.” They both laughed loudly. “Do you think we stand a chance of getting them married before the babies come?” Beth asked. “I don’t know. They seem to have made up their minds about certain things, not that they’re sharing. And Abby’s very stubborn when she’s made up her mind.” “She seems to be perfect for him. Everyone’s entitled to a mistake here and there. Not to mention they have babies coming. Any second…” “Maybe if we put our heads together….” The door to the bar opened and in came Ed Michaels, Chuck McCall, Abby and Cameron. They stood just inside the door and stared at Susan and Beth who had a couple of empty martini glasses apiece sitting at the bar. “Just what are you two up to?” Cameron asked. The women grinned largely and Beth said, “Just getting to know each other, Cameron.” Abby tugged on Cameron’s sleeve to bring his ear down to her lips. “I never once thought it might be worse if they liked each other,” she whispered. “They’re going to be a pot of trouble.” He grinned and slipped a kiss on her lips. “Nothing we can’t handle, baby. Stick with me.” *

She was an alpha woman. Strong and confident, driven and ambitious, and absolutely unafraid of saying what she wanted. It scared some men. It scared most men.

As ambitious women, we need to tell one another our stories. We need to tell the truth about our lives.

address the great hunger on the part of high-aiming women for advice that speaks to our discontent—and to our ambition to be purely and freely ambitious.

He needed a woman with whom he could share thoughts about his work. Someone with ideas of her own, a drive of her own, someone who could introduce him to other worlds. Without this two-way exchange, where was the partnership? What was there to engage him? He didn’t need anyone to follow him; he wanted someone to take turns leading. Finn was doomed to be drawn to intelligent, ambitious women whose passions took them away from him.

The classic scenario unfolds like this. An ambitious and successful woman heads down a challenging career path with the thought of having children in the back of her mind. At some point, this thought moves to the front of her mind, typically once she finds a partner. The woman considers how hard she is working and reasons that to make room for a child she will have to scale back. A law associate might decide not to shoot for partner because someday she hopes to have a family. A teacher might pass on leading curriculum development for her school. A sales representative might take a smaller territory or not apply for a management role.

This is the sad reality in workplaces around the world: Women help more but benefit less from it. In keeping with deeply held gender stereotypes, we expect men to be ambitious and results-oriented, and women to be nurturing and communal. When a man offers to help, we shower him with praise and rewards. But when a woman helps, we feel less indebted. She’s communal, right? She wants to be a team player. The reverse is also true. When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn’t help is “busy”; a woman is “selfish.

I was a young guy who started as a fact checker,” he said, “but I always knew—and was told—that I would get a shot at reporting, writing, and editing. For a young, ambitious, talented woman, that elevator was out of order.

It is as if I am, at last, catching a glimpse of myself not as I might wish to be, but as I am. I see a woman who is less ambitious than she once was.

People who get money for their work, but who do not work primarily for the money—whether it’s a weekly pay envelope or a thousand dollar bonus. People who are ambitious—not to climb socially, not to get wealth and titles—but ambitious to do more and more work of a better and better kind. It’s among such people that you’ll find the woman

Nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, a teacher's prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

I’ve met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

shrugged. I’d never had any expectations of inheriting. I supposed that was why I hadn’t been too surprised with my father’s last wishes. “I know you’re not an ambitious woman and you’re more content with . . . spiritual matters. But don’t you see that a big injustice has been committed on our behalf?

Francesca, when did you discover that you were an ambitious woman, and how? When did your mind begin to turn on itself? When did you realize that these things would make your life as an artist even harder than it would be otherwise?

Nearly every guy I’ve dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, teacher’s prophesy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it’s how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I’ve met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

If you want the best from a woman,treat her well. Good women are everywhere