After decades of glacial change in gender roles, a new generation of working women is proving to be as ambitious as their male counterparts, as measured by their eagerness to move up the career ladder。

　　Based on a unique long-term study of attitudes in the U.S. work force, about two-thirds of both men and women under age 29 say they desire more responsibility on the job. Having children doesn't dent the ambitions of young women workers; 69% of mothers in this age group say they want to move up on the job, compared with 66% of women without children, says the study of about 3,500 wage, salaried and self-employed workers and small-business owners, released Thursday by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute in New York。

　　That compares with a marked difference among these groups as recently as 2002, when only 48% of young working mothers, compared with 66% of men and 61% of young women without children, said they wanted to climb the career ladder。

　　Young women's motivation for saying they want more responsibility on the job can't be determined from the data. One factor is that women are shouldering a larger breadwinning role at home, either by necessity or choice; females in dual-earner couples now provide an average 44% of household income, up from 39% in 1997, the study says. And husbands are taking on more workload at home; 31% of women say their spouses do half or most of the child care, up from 21% in 1992. Women also say men are gradually shouldering more of the cooking and cleaning。

　　The study asked questions about work and family roles, attitudes about home life and the workplace, and other worklife issues. While many surveys dabble in these issues, this study is unusually rigorous, gauging answers to the same questions periodically since 1977 through a random telephone survey of a nationally representative sample。

　　In another shift, men of all ages now report work-family conflicts at a higher rate than women, suggesting the sexes are reaching new parity on this front too. While 34% of both men and women reported work-life conflicts in 1977, that percentage has risen by 11 percentage points to 45% among men, compared with a rise of only five points among women, to 39%。

　　The findings reflect a 'revolutionary change in attitudes and behaviors among both women and men,' says Ellen Galinsky, president of the institute. Generation Y, born after 1980, seems to be approaching equality in gender attitudes, accelerating likely pressure on employers to make career paths more flexible and offer such work-life supports as alternative scheduling。

　　Also, a broad shift in attitudes is lowering old barriers. Prejudice against working mothers is easing; today, 67% of men and 80% of women agree that employed women can be good mothers, the study says. This compares with 49% of men and 71% of women in 1977. People whose own mothers worked when they were growing up were much more likely to agree strongly that working moms can do just as good a job with their children as those who stay at home。

　　Earlier in this decade, a dip in the percentage of young mothers who also held jobs sparked much discussion of why women were 'opting out' of the work force. The 2002 dip in women's career ambition, also reflected in the survey, may have been linked to a sharp increase in overwork and job pressure following the dot-com bust, based on the institute's previous research on employee attitudes at the time, Ms. Galinsky says。