Success can mean anything from securing a corner office at a major corporation to making a small, positive impact on another person's life, to spending a significant amount of meaningful time with your children. The word's definition varies depending on who you ask -- but a new survey suggests that men and women may think about the concept differently.
Citi and LinkedIn polled 1,023 LinkedIn members (512 women and 511 men) about their views on work, success and balance. The results of the online survey dispel a number of gender stereotypes, most notably the idea that women value marriage and children more highly than men. They also suggest that professionals are less likely to consider success merely a matter of status or income.
Redefining success may be especially beneficial to working women. At the Huffington Post's June 2013 Third Metric conference, Padmasree Warrior noted that, when hiring and promoting employees, bosses are more likely to look for candidates with stereotypically "male" attributes. "We never say we want people who are empathetic, who are creative, who are good listeners," she said. "And I think we need to change that."
The Citi/LinkedIn survey sheds light on how men and women are thinking about success now. Here are six important things we learned:
1. Fewer women are including relationships, children or marriage in their definitions of success. Nine percent of women did not link being married or coupled up to success -- up from 5 percent in 2012. This certainly defies the myth that all women are biologically wired to want to stay home and have babies.
2. On the flip side, men are more likely to equate kids with success. Eighty-six percent of men factored having children into their definition of success, compared to 73 percent of women.
3. Very few people actually unplug from work during time off. Fifty-eight percent of men and women work over the weekend at least once or twice a month, and 62 percent work on vacation. (It's hard to do, but we all know that detoxing from your gadgets is good for productivity and a solid night's sleep.)
4. Women and men describe themselves differently. Men were more likely than women to refer to themselves as confident, ambitious and family-oriented. Women were more likely to describe themselves as good listeners, loyal, collaborative, detail-oriented and happy.
5. Women are more stressed about money than men. Women reported being consistently more concerned than men about paying off student loans, getting a raise and paying off credit card debt. As more women become the primary breadwinners in their households, it seems unlikely that these anxieties will go away any time soon.
6. Millennial women are more likely to describe themselves as "ambitious" than women of any other generation. This flies in the face of the idea that Millennials are entitled and lazy. In reality, they're anything but.
Did these results surprise you? Comment below, or join the conversation on Twitter @HuffPostWomen.
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