“The f**king debate is all over”, Kevin Roberts, ex-chairman of global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, told Business Insider last Saturday.
Yes, that’s right. The fight for gender equality in the workforce is over. According to Roberts women have a different type of ambition than men – “circular ambition” – and they don’t actually want the top jobs.
(He’s now ex-chairman because of these comments. But he’s not the only one who believes them to be true.)
I’d never heard of circular ambition but, apparently, it’s to be blamed for a lot of things. Like the fact women hold only 12% of the world’s board seats. Or that, in Roberts’ industry specifically, only 11.5% of creative director positions are held by females.
What’s needed, apparently, to land that comfy leather boardroom chair is “vertical ambition”.
I’d never heard of this either. But vertical ambition is a ‘take no prisoners’ approach. It’s driven by the want for wealth, power, fame. It’s a type of ambition that was created by old, white, angry men, and is still celebrated and promoted-to-executive-level-positions by the old, white, angry men.
Vertical ambition sounds awful.
Circular ambition, in comparison, is a much more holistic pathway. Less dedicated to landing the top job, more focused on the ‘meaningful’ things in life. As Roberts explains.
“Women’s ambition is not a vertical ambition, it’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy,” he told Business Insider. “So they say: ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur-like men judge yourself by’. I don’t think [the lack of women in leadership roles] is a problem. I’m just not worried about it because they are very happy, they’re very successful, and doing great work. I can’t talk about sexual discrimination because we’ve never had that problem, thank goodness.”