TOO AMBITIOUS: Challenging the Status Quo + Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez

Welcome to the women of ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Calder Hume. And today we are going to look specifically at ambition for women as per normal, but we're going to be looking at it through the lens of culture and how religion and socialization and so many other factors come into play for women and how we are socialized to be able to exhibit or not exhibit ambition.

And today my guest is Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez, who is a fantastic journalist. Uh, Reporter. I don't know. How would you summarize what you do, Stephanie? I'll let you introduce yourself. Hi, thanks for having me here. And yeah, I feel bad because every time somebody asks my husband what I do, he has like the same very difficult task to summarize all of the different things.

But basically, yeah, I'm a writer. I cover women, money, power, and ambition. And I've written in like the traditional journalistic. Fear. I hosted a money podcast for real simple magazine called the money confidential podcast. And I also have my own newsletter [00:01:00] called too ambitious, where I D dive deeper into the data around women and ambition, which is really what I do a lot on my Instagram, where I'm most active at Stephanie O'Connell.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, that is your Instagram is fantastic. I first saw it several months ago and I admit I was very jealous like immediately because I was like she is doing exactly what I want to do she's sharing the exact studies that I'm looking at she's doing it in such an efficient way like you make it so accessible which is hard because like we're talking about like social science literature that you're sharing Yes, it is very hard.

I want everyone to know that as you think I sound really eloquent on Instagram, I promise you behind the scenes, it's hours, days, Google Docs upon Google Docs of deep research, not to mention the fact that I film forever. And I edit these videos, as you'll see on the podcast here, I have a tendency to be very rambly [00:02:00] because all these ideas are very interconnected.

And one thing makes me think of another thing. And these are really complex things. One thing about Instagram that's cool is because you have only 90 seconds, you can only tackle one idea at a time. And that's a really powerful mechanism for getting to the heart of the point. I think that's why these messages have really resonated.

Yeah. And you do it really, really well. Even, even just the, I think you said it's the name of your, uh, your newsletter, Too Ambitious. That is a phrase that comes up over and over and over again in the literature, even in non English speaking areas, which I think is so funny. Like even people who speak completely different languages are still using that phrase and they're Especially for women.

Oh, she's too ambitious. She's more than me. I'm unattracted to her. I can't be her friend. It's really incredible. The consistency there is there. Yeah. It's almost mute. It's almost exclusively women who that phrase is applied to. What does it mean to be too [00:03:00] ambitious as a man? This is always, it's called the flip test, right?

And you say this for another gender identity. Almost everything you say about women, like it's a red flag to be like, Oh, wow, saying this about a man would be ridiculous. There's no such thing. So, yeah, I think what inspired me with too ambitious to, to really claim that branding was not just the idea of always having felt Yeah.

Thanks. Too ambitious for many of the people and interactions I've had in my life and having my ambition framed as a bad thing when my entire childhood, I was told it was a good thing, but also it was around the time of the last election and Kamala Harris was. Was, uh, being criticized for being too ambitious and, and that her ambition was considered disqualifying as a reason for her not to be considered a vice presidential nominee.

And if there is anything that you need to run for political office, it is an [00:04:00] exclusive willingness to say, I want this thing. And yet we penalize women for saying, I want this thing. And that is the impossible catch 22 that informs my work. It's really interesting. I've been looking at the trends and trying to figure out like, why is ambition starting to become something that we're looking at as social scientists, in journalism, in media, especially like in feminist spaces.

And I really do think it is connected to politics, especially like with Hillary Clinton, like that really, that really. And it's, it's just continued to go up. So I'm high profile, right? Anytime you get women entering spaces where they're challenging the status quo and the challenge and the status quo, it has been very largely white, straight, cisgender men for a very long time.

And there really isn't. Much that's changed in leadership, the numbers of women's representation in politics or in [00:05:00] business are still very, very low. Actually, it hasn't changed much my entire lifetime, but because these are very high profile examples, it has become this kind of wedge issue and a way to kind of create this vilification of anything women do in previously male dominated.

spaces such that there's no right way for them to be in that space and to criticize them into submission. It's, I mean, we can't do anything right, basically, in those spaces. And that's the framework that I want to take here is like, you are not the problem. The problem is the structure. And so I'm really excited to have you on today because I know that you get that and we can speak about that.

And I've had so many conversations with women specifically who don't understand what they're up against or they feel it, but it's under the surface. And so they can't. See the gender bias. They can't see the misogyny. They can't see [00:06:00] the structural inequities that are inherent there. So I'm, I'm really excited to dig into that.

Uh, so to the start, do you consider yourself to be ambitious? Yes, very much. So my whole life I've identified as ambitious and I still do. I know. Identifying as ambitious these days, not just for the gendered reasons, but just for, uh, the true criticism of capitalism has become less and less in fashion.

And I get it. Like I understand why there's a lot of pushback against this idea of ambition, but I also think that's predicated on a misrepresentation of ambition. Um, and this conflation of ambition with hustle culture and productivity culture, I really don't think ambition isn't about. Any kind of corporate ladder exclusively.

I don't think it's about an amount of hours worked or about a certain kind of productivity at all. I think for me, it's to be seen and valued for the things I see in value in myself. And [00:07:00] oftentimes that ambition has only been allowed to thrive for women in relationship to other people, as a wife, as a mother, de centering the self.

And to be able to have ambition that is your own. Independently in the same way men have been able to have their ambitions independently is at the crux, I believe, of the crisis of ambition that I think sometimes gets overlooked when we, when we talk about the, the real criticisms of capitalism, which are fair, but this idea that somehow women just, this is only an issue for women and they're the ones who are disproportionately being marginalized from their own ambition to me.

That's. Yeah. The fault of capitalism and patriarchy. This is not some kind of, um, I think, I think the flip side of the same coin is what I'm saying. Like ambition has been kind of cast as the villain. And I don't think that's the villain. The villain is that what it means to succeed is to be ambitious and [00:08:00] only this very narrow way that has been reserved for white men.

Yeah. Thank you. That's like. That's like my whole goal here is to really complicate that idea of that ambition is climbing the corporate ladder. You have to be an asshole to do it. You have to climb on people to do it. It's about these outward markers of achievement and it's it's really not because Especially for women, because we haven't been socialized to be able to step into other spaces.

And because we just hold so many roles in places that we exist in, like ambitious, like manifestation of ambition can be rest. It can be healing. It can be relationships. It can be doing lots of things. It can be so many things beyond those like capitalistic ideals. And I do come across that a lot in saying that word ambition to people because they're like, Oh, you're like this American who's like, You know, focused on these things, and it's like, actually, I see this as a personality trait that's [00:09:00] so much bigger, and then there's this socializing aspect to it, and there's this gendered aspect to it, and I think this is like, this is the scenario I tell people.

It's like, okay, consider, um, like a pair, uh, some parents, and they're talking about their son, their daughter's new, Beyonce and they say, Oh, he's really ambitious. Everyone's like, Oh, that's awesome. Like, great. He's ambitious. Now consider if they're talking about their new daughter in law. Oh, she's really ambitious.

Like that doesn't hold the same excitement or weight. It's like an asterisk. Like, Oh. So she doesn't want a family. Oh, like it implies so many things and it's like, Oh, it makes me itchy. Like I want to dig into that. Yeah. It's just such a negative connotation. And this is like the flip test. You can say the exact same phrase, but depending on who it's applied to, somehow it goes from being a positive to a negative.

And that's the thing that I want to confront to your point, not. Like, I don't know [00:10:00] everything else. Sometimes I think some, the conversation gets so tried sidetracked by all of these different threads, but I really want to come back to this fundamental paradox of like, there is no right way to be an ambitious women in our world.

And that's not fair. Mm hmm. Thank you. Okay, so now let's, let's go back to your childhood. Where do you see this, like, part of yourself exhibiting? And then what were your, like, your, your adult figures in your life, your socialization? Was this something that was nurtured? Was there shame involved? Tell us about that.

I was always ambitious and unapologetically. So for a very, very long time, partly because I grew up in a house where my mom made more than my dad, both my parents worked full time. My mom made more than my dad. She was the decision maker about all things. And so for me, that was the way the world worked.

And it was a rude awakening to become an adult. I will say. How nice. Honestly, like, I'm sorry that that was a rude [00:11:00] awakening, but how wonderful to be raised in a home with a strong female role model. Yes, it was nice, but I will say, I think even for a woman who did not have that experience, uh, it was also part of the zeitgeist of my childhood.

I was born in the 80s, so my childhood was very 90s. Girl power. It was really defined by limited anthems of the spice girls and the stickers of like girls rule. And I was a gymnast. So there's like all the thing of like, I can do what boys can do. And that was the metric, right? I can do what boys can do.

And. Why? Why is that the metric? Um, yes, I want to be able to do the same behavior without being penalized for things that boys are rewarded for. But like, there's a lot of things boys do, like their model of leadership that I'm not looking to emulate. And I don't think that's the ultimate goal, but I think all of these things of [00:12:00] the zeitgeist and the culture and the discourse around girl power that I was exposed to not only in my own home, but growing up culturally.

At least, you know, in the United States, middle class, you know, very privileged life that I had was just totally failed to acknowledge the fact that none of these things that I was being told we're going to be rewarded when I actually put them into practice. And I think that's what freaked me out about becoming an adult was suddenly that.

Everything I had been told to do to get the things I wanted and be competent and speak up and ask for more and demand what I deserve. All of that stuff. When you do it as a fully grown, independent adult women, you're far more likely to get backlash and be penalized for doing those very things that you've been told your whole life.

Are the things you need to do to be as successful as your male colleagues. And yeah, I do think [00:13:00] those things are important, but this idea that. It was something that we could change through our behaviors as women, as opposed to simply interrogating the spaces and the workplaces and the structures and the policies and the relationships and the families and the culture that look at a woman who asks for more money and says, who is she to do this?

And when the same thing is being told of a man of look at what a powerful bold leader he is, that's the stuff. Where that energy really needed to be and still needs to be and I think my disillusionment is something I've seen among many of my colleagues. What I have found consistently is like I'm in my late thirties now and My whole generation of girls who were raised in the era of girl power are coming into what is our peak earnings years, and we're pretty much [00:14:00] no better off than than the women who were our age when we were born, and that's pretty.

Depressing. And I think a lot of that is because we've allowed this discourse to continue around ads, the next generation, or it's the, the behaviors of girls that are women that need to be modified when really it's the way that behavior is responded to in these systems that needs to be modified. Yeah, I think that's another interesting kind of twist on that American idealism where we.

want to think of ourselves as independent agents that are in control of our future and can change things. Well, if I just say it in the best way, if I just manage this, I can take care of it. And I mean, I'm, I'm a similar age group to you and I'm, I'm the oldest girl of three girls. And so that's like even more heightened as like the oldest child is like, well, I can just manage this and get what I want.

And then there is that disillusionment. There is that, that dissonance [00:15:00] and. In sociology, we call it, um, animy. It's that feeling of being socially deviant and being other, of not presenting in a way that is what people expect of us and being othered. And it, it's so confusing. It is. So thank you for speaking to that.

One of the things people will often say in response to my videos about this will be like, well, you should just not care. You should just not care what other people think. And that is so disingenuous. First of all, it's just once again blaming women for their own oppression. But it's also, that's not how humanity works.

Everything we do, as you know, is like about belonging and meaning and identity. And these social sanctions that are being put on only one group of people is like, The idea that we justify that or simply dismiss it as like, well, you should just [00:16:00] not care is not only like against humanity and the idea of community and belonging, but it's just like so disingenuous and gross.

Like the fact that we're willing to accept and justify and purpose. That's what I think of when I hear stuff like that. It's like, oh, we want to excuse this behavior and allow it to continue rather than confront it and change the accountability mechanism. And that comes up so often in these conversations, whether it's about like just telling women more stuff they should be doing differently, or whether it's about perpetuating some of the myths that reinforce these unequal outcomes time and time again.

Okay. So as we, as we dig into this a little bit deeper, um, tell us about those moments of that, like, That dissonance, that like shock that it's not working out. What, how has that marked your career path? How has that marked your personal path? Um, different [00:17:00] areas of your life. And then how have you handled those like shocking moments or, you know, the dissonance, I think the greatest moment of dissonance for me was when I got engaged, which was later in my life.

I was already in my mid thirties by the time I got married. And what happened was this just. outpouring of love and celebration and support. And it was totally wild to me because I had never felt that in my entire career. When I started a business, when I wrote a book, when I did these really big things that really meant a lot to me and I really needed support for.

And then there was just like this total shocking out. of community and love and what can I do to help? Nobody asked me what they could do to help me. Like when I'm starting a business, they look at you starting a business. They're like, [00:18:00] okay, good luck with that. I roll, right? You're too big for your britches.

Like, I guess I wasn't totally surprised because basically my entire twenties people just wanted to know who I was dating and nobody ever asked me about my goals or what I was working on or what I was excited about. But I think the just total disproportionate scale of that love and support around getting married, which for me was like not a life goal.

It's just something that I love being married. I think it's wonderful. Not against it, but I think it just really upset me, the dissonance of like, I cannot believe how, how much of a different experience this is. And I think this is another way that sexism manifests in a way that is Benevolent. It's not a bad thing.

It's not a malicious thing. The extent to which we don't show up for [00:19:00] people and for women's particularly when it comes to celebrating their ambitions and their things that they're working towards that they say they want for themselves versus these very Narrow ideas of what it means to be a good woman.

Like the outside support you get for announcing an engagement or a pregnancy compared to material support for the lived experiences of your own ambitions, that's sexism. And I think I know it doesn't get framed that way, but I think we should be able to say that that's what it is because it's all this is about systems of incentives and disincentives.

And when you're incentivizing women to become wives and mothers above all else. And you are disincentivizing them from pursuing their own ambitions by not providing support, by not celebrating or acknowledging or asking how you can help. That is the same mechanism that causes people to be able to lean into [00:20:00] something or lean away from it.

I definitely see that. And it's been interesting because my own life path has looked very. Uh, gender role traditional, I got married young, I had kids young, I stayed at home with them, or at least it appeared that way. And now I'm in my mid thirties and I'm going to grad school and we're moving our family across country for my education.

I am about to earn a lot of money and work outside the home and there, people are just baffled. They're just very, very confused as to why. I would do this because obviously I had it all. So why would I, why would I want something different? And then because my life looked a certain way, they're assumed my values and my goals were oriented to a certain direction.

And this has always been the plan. It's always been the plan for me and my husband. We always knew this was going to be how it is, but everyone else is just, they [00:21:00] can't fathom it and they don't know how to ask questions. They're like, Oh, that's great. You got into a good school, but like, what would you do with that?

And I'm like. Right, this is, again, this is the flip test, right? Nobody would say this to your spouse. Nobody would not it would be there would be zero questions. Why would you want to get a higher education at a at a world class school? I don't understand. Yes. Yeah, it's that's sexism. Right? And I think it's really easy to dismiss these things as I it's not such a big deal.

You know, this is stakes aren't that high, but I think what I'm trying to get at in the work I do in the videos and the research I get into is really quantifying the effects of all of these single not so big deal things, right? A little discrimination here, a little bias there, a little less support there, a little more support here, but over time.

What happens is this becomes a daily experience and when it becomes a daily experience, it compounds. And over the [00:22:00] course of a lifetime, not only is this incredibly expensive to women, you know, you need to look at pay gaps over the course of a career. Oh, you know, it's really small when you start out and then it gets.

Bigger in your thirties. It's for narrows again. Over the course of a career, we're looking at over a million dollars. And the fact that women are oftentimes the primary providers for their entire families is it's unconscionable to me that that this isn't more of a headline story every day. Um, so I think importantly, the, the quantifying is Thanks.

Just really showcases the stakes of these things that we often minimize or diminish, or we write off. I also think it's important to acknowledge the ways in which the everyday experience of these things disenfranchises women from their own ambitions. Yeah. Because it makes it like, quote unquote, not worth it, right?

It's if every day is a fight. If every time you act on the thing you want to [00:23:00] do. You're just met with resistance and questioning and backlash instead of celebration and support like I was talking about with my wedding that does change your relationship to your own ambitions. I think we don't really talk about that enough because ambition isn't static, it is either nurtured, or it is harmed and women are being disproportionately harmed having their ambition harmed.

And I think. Back to our conversation earlier about this like anti ambition movement, I think we're often misdiagnosing where this is coming from. This isn't something, you know, women wake up 30, 35 one day and say, I'm not ambitious anymore. No, that is the result of a collective harm that has been done to them.

Well, and like I read a. I think the Harvard Business Review article about this where the top executives, the top companies and consultants can quantify this and can show that companies and specifically looking at companies, but it goes across any [00:24:00] social group that ambition can be nurtured or it can be harmed.

And we know how, how this happens. We know. Where we can do like what we can do to fix it and yet it's not being done and we keep telling women it's their individual choices that are harming them and then assuming that they must, it must be because they're mothers and they have too many other priorities, they're not focused and so this is where, this is where some of my research comes in where the sociological literature on ambition has been measuring ambition Without regard to gender for the most part, and it's been using what are called agentic metrics.

And so they're looking at your socioeconomic status. They're looking at what kind of position do you have in your company that you're working at? How much educational attainment have you achieved? And. Not looking at women's socialized spaces and roles, the places where we have been allowed to grow and to flex and be ambitious.

And then also not [00:25:00] taking into account how we are disenfranchised when we do step into those predominantly male socialized realms. And then we say, Oh, women are ambitious, but it's because our framework of what ambition is and how we're looking at and how we're measuring it is completely biased. Yeah, and I think one of the clearest examples of this is when you look at unpaid work or volunteer work, like the amount of really powerhouse effort that goes into creating structures for schools, school fundraising, for example, or any kind of activity.

Um, where women have been allowed to your point to participate and to act on their ambitions or the nonprofit spaces, anything that's in the, in the non paid space, because it's not a, a threat to the status quo, right? Where men hold financial power, you just. Don't see any evidence that there's some kind of a lack of ambition.

What you see is an environment where [00:26:00] women have been allowed to express their ambition without the constant penalties and where they're going to be surrounded by other people and encouraged and rewarded. So that's why I'm always coming back. Okay. What are the incentives? What are the rewards and what are the disincentives?

And if those are being applied differently to different people based on gender identity, and of course, this is true across other metrics too. Then, then you have differential outcomes. And that's why I think anytime we see a difference in gender outcomes, we have to look, we have to think back to, okay, what are the incentives and disincentives?

And I look at this for men with a paternity leave, for example, right? This hurts men too. If the incentives are for men to be in the paid workspace above all else, then they are going to be penalized when they prioritize family obligations, like taking paternity leave. So I think this, everything is not about these individual dynamics to your point.

And it's not [00:27:00] ever about a singular interaction. It's about what we reward and what we punish and for whom. Yes, thank you. I, I completely agree. Um, I'm, I'm curious to see how that changes over time because we've seen changes in, um, social expectations on education where now women are, I think, outpacing men in terms of achieving, um, college graduation and, and, advanced degrees.

Um, and so we haven't been seeing a lot of the, the shared work home life workload, uh, between heterosexual couples, um, especially and even as women enter the workforce. But I wonder as men take on more of those roles and publicly lean into those communal spaces, I do wonder how it will shift, but it is certainly taking freaking forever.

And in the meantime, We're still being punished. We're still being hurt for this. It's still [00:28:00] damaging women and it just continues to create those like binary spaces where we're allowed to be and make women and non binary people and anyone who doesn't conform just completely illegible and invisible. In these spaces.

So how are we in the world? Are we going to support them if we can't even see them or talk to them or understand them? Totally. Like the, the idea of a binary and rigidity is really harming everybody as you, as we've been talking about. And what's been interesting is. As people's economic circumstances have increasingly required to incomes to make a household function for most people who are not upper middle class, uh, there has been more leniency and allowing women to enter a paid spaces, right?

Women are now increasingly expected to partake in the workplace. And so you see women being allowed to operate. in part in some spaces with feminine qualities and [00:29:00] masculine qualities, but you don't really see as much acceptance. With men being allowed to express the feminine, and this is a problem. This is because you don't get, yeah, right now you have, okay.

You can go have a job if you're a woman, but it has to be a certain kind of job, right? You can't be, you can't, you can't be making more than your partner. God forbid, you know, anything like that. Don't have a spouse. Then you're allowed to, because you have to, right? If you're married, you don't have to. So you shouldn't.

Um, but to this idea of like, you know, women are really operating. Across these stereotyped traits, the masculine and the feminine, and yeah, they face backlash in some of those masculine traits, but the amount of men backlash men face for really engaging in anything feminized is really bad. It's almost less, there's almost less flexibility there for what men are allowed to engage in without having social sanctions and stigma.[00:30:00] 

And that, again, hurts everybody because of men. Are not allowed to lean into caretaking and household labor and being the parent who shows up for the PTA instead of mom, right? Then we're going to have a situation where this dynamic that women are doing everything and are totally burnt out and disenfranchised with from their ambitions is going to continue.

I completely agree. So I'm wondering, you've seen these trends, you report on these trends, you're talking to lots of people about this just like I am. What is the, what's on your to do list? What's the takeaway? What should we be doing differently? Do we even have enough information to make those kinds of recommendations?

And who, who do we make those recommendations to? Yeah. So my focus in my work is almost never about what women should do because I think the constant constant Focus on women's individual behavior and how it's [00:31:00] too much or too little of something has really just tied us all up in a bunch of knots that doesn't matter how much, which way we lean, there's going to be a reason why that's not good enough.

And so, yeah, I always. Think best practices for human beings, uh, being good and kind and operating in a way in the world that we want to see more of is great, but I really don't try, I don't really do checklists for, okay, women should do X, Y, and Z. But what I try to do instead is talk about all of these things as we've been talking about through these frameworks of why is.

This phenomenon happen happening and challenging what's often the go to assumptions and explanations that people point to what I do see happening is that there is a real lack of accountability around this gender inequality. And I think. It's something that might surprise people to [00:32:00] hear because you hear people talk about like pay gaps and leadership gaps and discrimination against mothers talking about that for years and it's still there, but it's justified.

It's so often justified and explained away with either false assumptions or sexism just disguised as some kind of like biological difference, which is just not predicated on truth. And I, that's what, why I do what I do because. Until we confront that this is actually just more sexism and not that women and men simply have different preferences.

So the more we really confront these narratives that have been used to explain, quote unquote, gender inequality and hold people accountable for unequal outcomes instead of allowing them to dismiss or diminish or justify. I think that is first and foremost, the number one thing. And I think we haven't done that.

We really haven't done that. I, I, [00:33:00] it's shocking to me, the amount of inequality. Quality we are comfortable with, and that is now just part of the mainstream discourse in a way where it's assumed these gender differences are assumed that it, that are oftentimes simply not even true. So that's where I really start my work.

And then I like to look at where is stuff working, where is stuff working differently? If I look at research about homes where fathers were more active in the housework, I see that sons are also more likely to be active in the housework. So I'm not saying, okay. Here's the checklist of five things we need to do differently.

I want to look at the data and say, the data is showing that when these elements are in place, we see more of this outcome that enables more equality. So how can we create systems that allow us to engage in life in that way, if that makes sense? Yeah. So it sounds like you are, you're pointing out the larger phenomena.

You're starting a [00:34:00] discourse about it. You're calling it out in In public spaces and trying to, like, take the next step in that evolution of, of a cultural shift on a larger scale and doing it through reaching the public instead of individual people, certainly not like a five, five top ways to be an ambitious woman.

Like, that's so like, I know magazine culture, isn't it? But it's great for SEOs. But I don't do it. It is. And there's There's a real stickiness to this approach like it's really hard you'll hear me now as I'm trying to parse out all of the pieces of it. I can't just say like, Oh, the issue is XYZ that you solve with XYZ.

These are very complicated dynamics because they're not just about behaviors. They're about culture identities. science, misperceptions, uh, you know, why things work the way they do psychology, why human behavior works the way it does. And I [00:35:00] think like those things that are sticky and complicated and gray are really hard to.

To shift into like a single talking point the great thing about lean in as in terms of like a talking point no matter how like not true or true it is, is that like I know what it is in two words if I say lean in I know what that means. You know if I talk about fair play what it means to divide housework equally.

It's a really click. quick, clear and concise takeaway. And what I'm trying to do is say, you know, not all of this is very clear and concise. This is about broader roles, a binary that we need to get rid of. It's about what cultures and societies value and for whom. And like, that's not super clear or sticky or catchy.

Yes. I don't have a lot to say because I'm in a similar place where it's [00:36:00] like, we need to know this is happening and we need to like, like, we need to have a framework and it needs to change. And I don't know how yet. And that's why I'm doing the work I'm doing. But like, Something has to keep progressing, or, like, we have to be doing something differently, I don't know, but we can't just get used to this and drop the conversation.

Well, what I will say is I have been really thrilled about how much this conversation, as I've been having it online, has really resonated with people. And the extent to which I get messages and comments from people that say, you know, I've always Felt this or experienced this, but I didn't have the language for it.

And so I internalized it and I thought it was me and I thought it was doing something wrong And it really messed up my own relationship to myself and what I wanted And now i'm really understanding this as a broader dynamic that isn't just about me And it's really helping me get clarity about what I need to do and [00:37:00] that's exactly What I want to see more of right?

It's not like a five step solution because it's going to be different for every person. But if you can have the broader framework to think about what you're experiencing and understanding it beyond the individual dynamics of just you and the person you're experiencing it with, I think it helps you process what's happening.

Oh, that's definitely been my experience. And unpacking that part of shame that said this, like, I'm ambitious. I feel shame for being ambitious. Why? There's something wrong with me. And then being like, no, there's not something wrong with me. I don't fit into the system that has been built. And then I've been told I'm supposed to fit into, like, this box just doesn't work for me.

I'm a big shiny star that's bouncing all around. I'm not going to fit in this box. Correct. And it's not a me problem, it's a you problem. I still have to deal with it. I still have to figure out how to survive life, but it's, it's not something that is [00:38:00] my fault. And it helps. It helps to have that mental shift.

It really does help. Like, I've also, in addition to doing a lot of the research I've had, Done a lot of individual interviews with people who've been through these experiences, you know, people who've negotiated job offers have had the job offers withdrawn and then what that subsequently did to their own confidence and how that stayed with them through their careers or it made them change industries like there's real consequences.

For internalizing these dynamics instead of understanding them as broader cultural forces. And what happened when we've had these conversations is people allow themselves to see those dynamics, and then they allow themselves to as to your point. Understand themselves within spaces that again, I keep coming back to this idea of like rewards and penalties or incentives and disincentives, like, but how can I identify the spaces where what [00:39:00] I am and am doing and want to be doing is celebrated and supported or the people or the communities.

Cause like I to this day struggle with this, but I have found much better that there are certain people I speak to that I will always be weird to them for loving work and wanting to talk about those kinds of things and not only wanting to talk about, I don't know. My relationship, I guess. Um, but there are people who see me, you know, to be seen to be valued like that's a belonging meaning.

These are the core experiences of what we're seeking as people in the world. Right. And so to find the people. Who see your ambitions and the things that you want for yourself and your independence and value them to have people value you for the things you value in yourself is truly special.[00:40:00] 

And I love having these conversations even now, even in this moment, it's, I'm rethinking the way that I engage with people when they. When they do hit milestones that maybe I don't personally value for myself, but they value for them. Like I can engage with them in a way that sees the world from their perspective or ask them, why is this so, like, why is it so great for you?

I'm so excited. You're excited. Tell me more about it. And like getting on board with them. I think that even just that language shift. changes how I engage with people. And then also understanding that this is a larger issue of like sexism that we're like embedded in. Then I hold less judgment for the people who can't comprehend me because they've never been taught how to comprehend me.

And so then I can just engage with everybody with a lot less. Emotional upheaval or realistic, like with realistic expectations, I think. So maybe that's the next intervention that we can work with. No, I think the realistic expectations is good. Like there's people in my [00:41:00] life that I don't expose myself to as often, or I don't expect the validation from them anymore.

And that has been very good for me, you know, to, I know who I need to go to for. Certain things, and when it comes to my ambition, things I value about myself, like I, it's funny because the people who most see that in me are not people I grew up with, and they are not people I live near. So it's an active effort.

It's an active effort that I have to cultivate those relationships, but the dividends of the. Have been enormous. Like I've really cultivated those relationships very strongly during COVID. And I came out of COVID with a completely different vision for my career and my life that is really being realized and taking off in the last couple of years.

And it's one of the most satisfying things. If not the most satisfying thing that's ever happened to me. And that is [00:42:00] all a result of a real intentional approach to my community building and not just defaulting to the people I've known my whole life, because honestly, they don't get it. I love that. That is such a fantastic summary of my own experience, the whole point of starting this podcast was like I need to build community and I need to be able to have a reason to talk to people like you who I have no social or like physical location, like ability to access and create networks and be like, Oh, I'm not the only one.

How do people do this? Yes. So thank you for, for summarizing that so well, I feel like that's a really great place to end on. Is there anything else that you want to share with us or say to ambitious women, or maybe what would you say to the structures that are holding us back? Who do you want to talk to?

Oh man, I I, this is my problem is like, I have like a hundred million things that are going on in my brain right now, but I really just want everybody to be seen and valued for the things that they see and value in [00:43:00] themselves. And I think a lot of the times the world doesn't allow for that. And it constrains people in ways that they can't even connect to what they see and value in themselves anymore.

They lose sight of it. And I think that's a real tragedy for. Everybody. This is oftentimes I'm framing this through what's happening to women. And I think that's important. And I think women do need to be centered more in these conversations. So I'm pretty unapologetic about doing that, but it's really important to understand the ways in which this actually hurts everybody.

It hurts men, women, people across a gender identity. It hurts children. It hurts people who are older. And I think what we see consistently in the data is. You know, people do better when we don't constrict them to only one idea of what it is to be a good man or woman or human, right? Everyone's a, uh, full manifestation of themselves is unique, and so they need to [00:44:00] be given the space and the support to really live into that.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing all of this with us today. Um, if anyone wants to follow you more or connect, I tell us about your Instagram, but any other, um, any other things you've got going on, if people want to work with you or hear more from you.

Yeah. So I'm definitely most active on Instagram these days. I'm at Stephanie O'Connell is my handle. Uh, if you Google me, Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez, you will find me. My newsletter is called too ambitious, where you can find a lot more of the deep dives into some of these topics we talked about today, but hopefully I'll see you on Instagram because it's mostly where I am every day.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Thank you so much for your research and perpetuating this conversation. It's. It's picking up in spaces, but there are very few people that are looking at it from the frame of, like, from the context that you and I [00:45:00] both seem to be coming at it from, and it's wonderful to be able to talk to somebody who sees the trends and can speak to all of this, and we do have similar world views.

I'm sure we have a lot of other things in common we haven't gone to, but thank you so much for being here and talking. This has been wonderful. Thank you for having me. All right. Bye.