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Seeing as how there's a good chance that you're reading this at work, you're well aware that a person's passion for a job tends to fade with time. Whether it's people getting promoted ahead of you, no one appreciating your contributions in last year's laser tag challenge, or simple burnout, a worker's ambitions tend to slowly wither as the months and years go by. And assuming you've been paying attention, you can probably guess how this varies by gender.

Women with under two years of work experience start out slightly more ambitious than men, but that hopefulness is quickly drained out of them, as if by a sad vampire. After two years, the average women's aspirations and confidence plummet by 60 percent and 50 percent, respectively. Men, meanwhile, only experience a 10 percent drop, possibly because they see all their female colleagues losing interest in getting promoted and figure that it improves their odds. Senior managers of both genders fare better, but when it comes to upward mobility, men are almost twice as confident.

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"Soon, I'll be assistant head mail room boy. Suck on that, Susan."

Why the disparity? It's not due to women getting married and having kids. It seems to come down to workplace culture. Most companies are run by white men, who tend to celebrate the hard work and achievements of their bros. New workers of both genders say that they fit the model of success for their employer and that their supervisors are supportive of their career goals, but after a few years, women report their feelings of support as having dropped significantly, while men lose almost nothing. Some women are told they're not cut out for high-level work, or that they "don't really want it," because there aren't already enough examples of women being told what they really want. Two-thirds of male managers don't even like giving career counselling to younger women because they figure it's a waste of time.