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Maybe it’s just my algorithm, but it feels like my timeline is full of women rejecting — or at least rethinking — ambition. Author (and fellow Canadian journalist) Amil Niazi wrote the book Life After Ambition: A Good Enough Memoir about her personal journey away from the pressure to lean in. “Ambition is still an important and necessary tool, but in capitalism, it’s also designed to work against you,” Niazi told Toronto Life earlier this year. Similarly, comedian Phoebe Robinson did a standup special last year called “I Don’t Wanna Work Anymore” all about dismantling girl-boss culture. “Not being a girlboss has allowed me to have a fuller life, which I think is great, not only for my own personal happiness, but it [also] inform[s] my work and the way that I approach it,” Robinson told the LA Times. It feels like we’ve been in an anti-ambition moment for a few years now but I mention Niazi and Robinson specifically because they are both women of color. And for awhile, the girlboss craze and then its subsequent backlash all felt very white. As a workaholic who was raised by immigrant parents to work “twice as hard” as my peers to be successful, I didn’t think leaning out was an option for me, and neither was the c-suite. But, like many millennials, I am burnt out and frustrated with working myself to exhaustion for little reward, especially at this point in my career when I am in a senior position.
