“Ambition” as code for “patriarchal privilege”

In her May 28 column, Ruth Marcus makes the claim that reason more women aren’t in higher political office isn’t because of discrimination, but that women simply don’t have the same amount of ambition that men do.

This is just more of the same old “blame-the-victim” pseudo-science, along the same lines as the belief that women don’t make more money only because they don’t ask for it (which has also been busted).
After several paragraphs of assuring readers that there is no discrimination against female candidates, Marcus then goes on to quote a study by Jennifer Lawless of Brown University and Richard Fox of Loyola Marymount, stating, “They [women] are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to have the freedom to reconcile work and family obligations with a political career” (italics mine). Marcus goes on to confirm that family and household obligations keep most women out of office, stating that the women candidates in the survey were far less likely to be married or have children than the men were, and of those who were married, 60 percent of the women, compared with only 4 percent of the men, said they were responsible for the majority of child care. Yet somehow, Marcus comes to the conclusion that these factors have nothing to do with the paucity of women officeholders.
This pervasive lack of household support steals women’s time and energy away from other ambitions. Add to this the cultural perception that women who work long hours at high-level jobs just don’t care about their families – when do you see high-powered male executives or politicians being grilled about how they balance their jobs with their families? – and you have the very definition of gender discrimination.