In Ukraine, I felt the need to compete only against women in looks, make-up and clothes

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA While living in Ukraine, the only time I have ever felt the pressing need to compete was with other women – in looks, make-up and clothes. And the competition was fierce. Curiously enough, in other settings, such as high school, college, or work, Ukrainian society does not strike me as even remotely competitive – at least, compared to the United States.

Competition is an integral part of American life and is encouraged early on. If you go to school in the United States, for example, you will most likely be graded “on a bell curve.” This means that when the test is scored, the average score automatically becomes an average grade (typically a B- or C+). The scores above and below the average are distributed evenly. The A grade becomes highly limited and the difficulty of achieving this mark, supposedly, makes students work harder and study longer.

America’s engagement in competitive sports stands out as well. It is a big part of American culture in general: many popular American movies include some kind of sports-related uplifting story. Sports bars are a favorite pastime. The teams with absurd names such as San Jose Sharks, Detroit Tigers, and San Francisco Giants attract huge, eager crowds. U.S. colleges fiercely compete with each other in all kinds of sports and the desire to beat the rival is so strong that, if you are a talented football player with no skills in science, you can, nevertheless, be assured enrollment in a university just for bringing it the chance to beat the rival.

America is a capitalist society with a market-based system. It is not surprising that seeing the results of your hard work and efforts as well as succeeding by striving for excellence serves as a motivation to work even harder and yearn for perfection. Knowing that it will be rewarded, people willingly work long hours to do a better job than a co-worker and even study hard in their 40s to get the highest score on a test. I sometimes observe the American competitive spirit with amazement. It is a spirit that I wish was more common in Ukrainian society.

Roaming the streets of Kyiv last spring filled me with mixed feelings of amazement and bitterness. While many people comment on the striking number of attractive young women, I find something else even more striking – the number of men’s swollen red faces and, especially, the look of resignation, content and defeat. I always argue when I am told that the Ukrainians and Russians have a drinking problem. I always try to prove people wrong. But when I took the Kyiv subway for the first time after a long while, I could smell it. The lines in front of kiosks near the Dorohozhychi subway to buy beer at 9 a.m. were also evidence against my usual argument that drinking alcohol in Ukraine is a mere stereotype.

This is especially unfortunate. Ukraine has very smart and talented people and, given the right environment, the incentive to try harder and the motivation to grow and develop, will make them no less successful, perhaps even more.

On the contrary, the perception that performance does not always depend on effort gets engraved in the mentality early on in Ukraine. By accepting bribes (even in the form of “presents”), allowing students to cheat and conceding to favoritism at schools, professors degrade the whole notion of competition by making it meaningless. The perception carries on to adult life. Why work harder and make any effort if change is highly unlikely?

Perhaps that is why Ukrainians tend to link success with luck, not effort. You are lucky if you find a good job. And if you happen to get promoted, you were probably in the right place at the right time. Going with the flow is hard to change. Maybe Ukrainian women need to be asked: What makes them compete?

Lena Redko, a Kyiv native, lives in San Francisco and is studying for a master’s in business administration at the University of San Francisco.