Women often eye top jobs

Women do not reach the top echelon of corporate America as often as men do because they don't want to. Women would rather be in the kitchen with their children than in the boardroom. Women do not seek higher positions but must be drafted into them.

A new survey by the Simmons School of Management, where the academic program focuses on women and leadership, appears to rebut such myths. Forty-five percent of the 571 businesswomen surveyed said they aspire to the highest leadership positions in their organizations. Even more, 56 percent, under age 34 do.

''The myth is that women don't want to go to the top either because they don't want power or they don't want to give up what they have to give up in their personal lives to do that," said Deborah Merrill-Sands, associate dean at Simmons. That is not supported by her survey's findings, she said.

''The women who aspire to the highest-level positions see those jobs as giving them a platform to fulfill the other goals important to them," which are ''giving back to their communities, making a difference in the world, and helping others, " she said.

The study will be released at Simmons's annual Women's Leadership Conference in May. A majority of the women surveyed nationwide were middle or senior managers, with an average of 21 years of work experience. Many were employed by companies with 20,000 employees or more.

Merrill-Sands said society's views about businesswomen and power derive from a strong perception that leadership is a masculine trait. She cited an article that appeared last fall in Fortune magazine as the latest to suggest that women must choose between success and family -- despite research showing that women at the top have more children and are more involved in their communities than are women in the middle ranks, she said.

Academic research also has found that women score higher than men in performance evaluations. But when bosses, peers, and counterparts are asked who has ''potential to be leaders, men get rated higher than women," she said. Other findings in her study include:

Seventy-five percent of the women surveyed said being an ''influential leader" was important in their choice of a job.

Only 27 percent said being ''in charge of others" is important; half said making a lot of money is important.

Seventy percent said they do not have an equal chance, compared with men, of making it to the highest levels of their organizations, and 89 percent believe they must adjust their styles in order to advance at work.

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.