The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up―and Then Pushes Them Down

Summary

For women disillusioned by the failed promises of girl power, a data-driven guide that reveals the hidden forces still fueling gender inequality at work. 

We spoke up. We took charge. We asked for more. But where has it actually left us? Not only are generations of women more burned-out than ever, but the gender pay gap has barely budged in decades. 

In The Ambition Penalty, journalist Stefanie O’Connell presents a deeply researched and sometimes shocking look at the ways women remain passed over and excluded, not for a lack of ambition but because of it. She calls it “the ambition penalty”—the sum of the financial, personal, and professional costs women face for daring to want more. 

The Ambition Penalty dismantles the myth that women are less ambitious than their male peers and debunks common claims—like women aren’t confident enough and don’t negotiate enough—used to justify stubborn gender gaps in power. This book reveals why decades of educational gains and empowerment messages have not translated into corresponding advances for women at work or at home. 

The Ambition Penalty gives women the talking points they can use to call out these biases and lays out proven practices for leaders and allies committed to cultivating environments where women’s ambitions are supported, rewarded, and celebrated.