There’s ample evidence that the gender gap persists at the top of the professional world: Women make up just 3.8% of the CEOS of the America’s largest companies, lead just 17 of the world’s nations and are paid—at least in this country—roughly 70 cents on the dollar that their male colleagues earn. It’s depressing stuff.
But new research from LinkedIn tells an even sadder story. In looking at the career aspirations of U.S. professionals as children, it seems that the astounding lack of women in some of the world’s most powerful professions could be explained by their childhood dreams.
LinkedIn asked 8,000 professionals to answer the question: “As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?” “These dreams of children are really pure.,” says LinkedIn career expert Nicole Williams. “This is pre what your parents thought you should be and certainly before you started thinking about salaries or societal roles and pressures of what you ‘should’ be. And that’s what makes them so telling.”
What’s the most telling is the differences in aspirations of young men and women roughly 20-30 years ago when today’s professionals (and LinkedIn members) were children.
Read more at ForbesWoman.com