Sex and Success

Even though the number of educated women is at an alltime high, the representation of women in the traditionally male professions is still extremely low. One likely reason for this paradox, says Harvard Psychologist Matina Horner, is that U.S. women actively fear success.

Horner began looking into this when she discovered that the few studies that had been made of women's motivation for achievement showed they had high anxiety. Reasonably certain that this meant women were afraid of competition, Horner decided nonetheless to test that assumption. Putting men and women in competitive and noncompetitive situations, she found that males showed a spurt of motivation in competition. Females did not. It was anxiety about competition that apparently held the women back.

The revelation about fear of success came from the one sex "cue" included in the experiment. Horner had modified the familiar TAT (Thematic Apperception Test*) to require males to write about the success of another male, females on the success of a female. Asked to write about a mythical girl at the top of her medical school class, more than 65% of the women associated her success with depression, illness and sometimes even death. Asked to write about a boy in the same position, 90% of the men equated his success with happiness and prosperity. The women obviously seemed afraid of success.

Horner discovered that women's fear of success increases with their ability, and that the greater their fear, the less well they do in competition with men. She also found that fear of success increases as women progress farther in school, affecting as many as 90% of college juniors. It is at this level that many women switch to more "traditionally feminine" goals, to teach instead of going to law school, for example, or to work for a politician instead of being one.

Fear of success was clearly tied to the attitude of society in general and the attitudes of boy friends in particular. Those attitudes became obvious during other TAT tests that Psychologist Horner administered to male law students. The men described a successful woman as unattractive, unpopular, unfeminine, merely a "computer" and overaggressive.

*Subjects tell a story that the psychologist interprets.

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