More than 15 percent of Dutch highly educated women in the 40 to 60 age group regret their choice of partner. Translated to all highly educated Dutch women in this age category, about 120,000 women are not satisfied with their partner. This is evident from research by career consultancy SheConsult. The same study showed that women would have liked to know more about self-confidence, masculine rules, negotiation and profiling when they graduated.
The research shows that the dissatisfaction with the choice of a partner is partly due to the fact that the partner participates too little in the care tasks, is too little supportive of the woman's career, too little stimulates and inspires her to have her own career, and too much pursuing his own career. Strikingly enough, it was also mentioned a number of times that the partner undermines the woman's self-confidence. This creates a picture of partners who are actually happy if their wives do not make a career, and who will not support, or even discourage, the woman's career.
More than 65% of women indicate that they have been ambitious to very ambitious at the start of their career. As time goes on, ambition diminishes. Of the women who were very ambitious after graduation (30%), 42% indicate that their ambition has declined. We see the strongest drop in ambition among people in their thirties. That's when the reality check takes place. Then women wonder whether they are successful, whether they will succeed in that career and whether they are willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary.
A large proportion of respondents (39%) also indicate that they regret their choice of work. For example, they indicate that they should have taken on a certain challenge, or should have switched employers sooner, or did not start working part-time. In addition, more than 20% regret the division of care tasks. A large majority (54%) say they would have liked to have addressed their insecurity when they were young. About 30% indicate that they would have liked to know more about masculine rules, operating strategically, profiling and negotiating.
