Young women are more educated than young men. A new survey out Thursday says they are more career-driven as well.

About two-thirds of women between ages 18 and 34 cited a high-paying career among their top life priorities, compared with just 59% of young men, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. That was a reversal from 1997, when 56% of women rated a high-paying career high on their list of priorities, less than the 58% of men surveyed back then, according to Pew.

The research is based on phone surveys of 1,181 women and 1,308 men.

The Pew survey suggests women's growing economic power is upending long-standing perceptions of work, marriage and family -- though not at the expense of raising children. Indeed, while young women now put a higher value than men on their career, roughly six in 10 women ages 18 to 34 said being a good parent was one of the most important things in their life. That was up 17 percentage points from 1997.

Women may also be responding to the reality that in many cases they will be bigger contributors to their family income than their mothers were. Though men still make more than women, their median earnings have been stagnant since the 1970s, adjusted for inflation, putting an increasing share of families' financial burden on women.

Tze Chun, a 28-year-old in Brooklyn, N.Y., is among the growing share of women who plan on blending family and career. She owns two businesses: a dance company and an online art gallery, Uprise Art, that also organizes private events.

'My career is always going to be a big part of my life,' said Ms. Chun, who isn't married but is in a serious relationship. 'There are so many great examples of women who have amazing careers and their husbands have amazing careers and they jointly have an amazing family. My goal is to be one of those.'

Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and former chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department, said that for some women, greater careerambition means less free time and a decline in overall happiness. In studies, she has shown that as early as high school, women begin pressuring themselves to excel at work and extracurricular activities. Even at 18, they are 'structuring their days more and more in pursuit of all these goals and not leaving as much time to just hang out,' she said.

Women have long been accumulating economic heft, accounting for 47% of the nation's overall labor force, up from about a third in 1960. Young women first eclipsed men in college attainment in the early 1990s, and the gap has grown wider. About 44% of women 18 to 24 were enrolled in college or a graduate program in October 2010, compared with 38% of men the same age.