What 20-something women want. (And why you should care.)

During the midterm elections this fall, we heard a lot about how our country is broken, how our system is dysfunctional, how our future is bleak. We heard from the left, the right, and everyone in between.

I know I’m not the only one who became tired of the rhetoric. I found myself wanting to hear different voices, different ideas, and different solutions. I had the opportunity to do so when Levi Strauss & Co. approached me to collaborate with them on a research study, “Shaping a New Future.” The study’s goal was to listen to the voices of an often underrepresented group: today’s young women.

We set out to investigate the lives of young women today, with a focus on women in their 20s. What do they want? What are their goals? To whom do they look for guidance? We launched a global study to better understand the challenges, expectations, goals, and experiences Millennial women face around the world.

Why study Millennial women?

There are two compelling reasons for studying Millennial women.

1) Young women are the leaders of the future. The Millennial generation is as large as the baby boomers, and women of this generation have access to more opportunities than any group of women in history.

2) Much of the media attention paid to this generation so far has highlighted the negative. Millennials (those born approximately 1980 or later) are frequently characterized as “entitled,” “helicopter-parented” and the “lost generation.” While some studies have touted the service-oriented, optimistic traits of Millennials, those attributes are too often lost in discussions of their “deferred adulthood” and “apathy.”

With our research, we set out to get the real story from Millennial women themselves. Who are they and what do they want?

Our study used global focus groups, literature review, and a survey of 1,000 Millennial women ages 21 to 29 across the US, Britain, Japan, Brazil, and France.

What we found

We found two major themes that seem diametrically opposed to the current political environment of partisanship and anger. We found that Millennial women desire independence and self-direction above all else, and that they seek a variety of perspectives to help them make personal and professional decisions. They are concerned about the current economy, but they are not paralyzed by it.

When you look beyond the stereotypes about Gen Y/Millennials and consider overall trends, as we did in our study, you’ll start to see a picture of a generation that includes women who are significantly different from previous generations in their priorities and their goals. They are living life on their own terms, and we can learn a lot from how they are navigating our 21st century world.

Miss Independent wants to 'have it all'

For instance, our research found that 96 percent of Millennial women worldwide list being independent as their most important life goal. This ranked above marriage, motherhood, home ownership and other, more traditional pursuits as essential to one’s feeling successful. Eighty-seven percent of women surveyed define success as being able to “shape my own future.” This is a generation of women who understand that there is no one-size-fits-all life plan. Everyone is charting her own journey.

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