--- title: Women: Careers, Success, Happiness and Motherhood description: For most women, the definition of "success" is constantly changing. How does yours stack up? canonical: https://time.com/3116899/women-success-poll/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-19T13:00:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:54:34.856Z og:title: Poll: As a Woman, What Does Success Mean to Women? og:description: For most women, the definition of "success" is constantly changing. How does yours stack up? og:url: https://time.com/3116899/women-success-poll/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Poll: As a Woman, What Does Success Mean to Women? twitter:description: For most women, the definition of "success" is constantly changing. How does yours stack up? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Women: What Does Success Mean to You? Take Our Poll > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Aug 19, 2014 1:00 PM UTC  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Aug 19, 2014 1:00 PM UTC A new national poll conducted for _Time_ and _Real Simple_ asked women how they define success and what it takes to get there. The results revealed that a woman’s view of success changes significantly as she ages and is heavily influenced by whether she wants to have children. Young women tend to be more ambitious, with 73% saying it was “very important” for them to be successful at work, compared to 37% of women in their 60s. And while 48% of 20-somethings said they cared about being promoted within their company (compared to 20% of women in their 60s), 57% of older women said being spiritual was important to success (compared to 42% of younger women). In other words, older women tend to have a much broader and less conventional definition of success. (_You can read more about our poll_ [_here._](http://ti.me/1mcqSpv)_)_ How does your definition of success compare to other women’s? How different are women from men in the way they think about their careers? Take this quiz and find out: _(These results were based on the interviews conducted by the polling company Penn Shoen Berland with 1000 women and 300 men from May 16, 2014 to May 22, 2014.)_ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3116899/women-success-poll/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3116899/women-success-poll/"},"headline":"Women: What Does Success Mean to You? Take Our Poll","datePublished":"2014-08-19T13:00:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:54:34.856Z","description":"For most women, the definition of \"success\" is constantly changing. 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