Women and the double standard of ambition

Abstract

Few human qualities are as morally unstable as ambition: We seem unable to decide whether to admire or condemn the desire for self‐advancement. This instability guarantees double standards—and none has been more enduring than that of women's ambition. This article traces the emergence of this double standard in early modern England, when ambition came to be widely accepted as natural and even virtuous in men, yet remained unnatural and vicious in women. It then turns to four seventeenth‐century feminists—Rachel Speght, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell, and Judith Drake—who challenged this emerging double standard. They reimagined ambition as a feminist tool, using it to argue for women's equality and even superiority. Unearthing this neglected strand of ambitious feminism not only contributes to the history of political thought but also points the way to a reconciliation between feminism and ambition that avoids the pitfalls identified by feminist theorists today.