If you’re a young woman who was growing up in the 2010s, I can only believe you’re a true millennial if you subscribed to Sheryl Sandberg's “Lean In” philosophy and also swore by Karen Brady’s famous “Winners never leave the office at 5 o’clock” in her 2012 book Strong Woman: the truth about getting to the top. Leaving at the same time as the office cleaners, all whilst drinking the last sip of your cold coffee from your ‘’If Britney can get through 2007 you can get through today’’ mug.

These phrases were literal peak ‘Girl Boss Era’, it was a movement. Girl Boss culture was rooted in millennial unapologetic ambition. It argued you could work your way out of structural inequalities in the workplace and that women who identified as ‘Girl Bosses’ were on a mission to uplift other women. It was: Girlboss meets third-wave Feminism.

The key criticism of the culture was that it did little to address systemic racism and misogynistic structures, or analyse the financial inequalities (i.e. gender pay gap) and that more money did not equate to freedom from these structures. This led to many think-pieces asking: is Girlboss dead?

Well was it?

In 2021, the Great Resignation generation was born, where many started quitting their jobs, due to multiple reasons including the rising cost of living, long-lasting job dissatisfaction, as well as the “quiet quitting’’ phenomenon. It was evident that many craved a deep reshuffling on how they viewed work, not just what it looked like but also what it felt like to them.

Cut to 2023, a new movement occurred: Soft Ambition.

Soft ambition is frank and unmysterious, and means what it says on the tin. It’s not about being a Girl Boss, rather, it’s about steering your career ambition towards things that matter to you the most. In other words: “work soft, play soft.”

This mindset is reflected in the many subcultures that include ‘’soft life’’ and ‘’lazy girl jobs’’. On Tiktok #lazygirljob, coined by Gabrielle Judge, currently has more than 17 million views, with many young women describing their “lazy girl jobs”. It’s clear that despite this social ‘movement’ being wrapped by terms like ‘lazy’ and ‘slow-life’, it doesn’t mean you have to be any less ambitious. These women are demanding more from their time and effort, where previous generations cringed at the idea of asking for flexibility, this encourages you to seek and demand it. Work-life balance is the phrase at the forefront of the job hunt and flexibility is a non-negotiable.

Jaimie, 30, a Partnerships Manager from London feels that working overtime and staying past hours can be irresponsible, especially when you are juniors because you have a salary and contracted hours, your team should hire more people to support the workload rather than you staying late. Mckinsey found that ⅓ of women have considered leaving their workplace or downshifting their careers due to burnout, so perhaps the soft ambition movement is a response to the threat of women leaving the workforce.

This shift in what ambition means explains why Molly Mae’s “Everyone has the same 24 hours as Beyonce so you have no excuse not to be successful” fell on deaf ears and Kim Kardashian’s “Get off your ass and work, it seems like nobody wants to work these days’’ received backlash for women, who in a Girl Boss Peak Era would have been celebrated. What success looks like to many women in a post-Girlboss, post-pandemic world has changed. For many, what is driving them isn’t the hard work, and the promise of happiness due from that, but more about working to live the life they want to live.

The Soft Ambition movement is the antithesis to the idea that the reason why you haven’t ‘made it’ is because you haven’t worked hard enough. It’s about work/life balance, prioritising your actual life and well-being.

Eliza, 22, an artist from Cambridgeshire told AllBright: “Ambition is subjective, I work so I can have a softer life, not later, but right now. Ambition is different for everyone though, everyone has different desires and goals.”

Soft Ambition speaks to the loss of the shine from overworking. More people are taking up hobbies including growing vegetables, wild swimming and colouring books, as a way to combat the stressful lives we often lead. It is reported that hobbies are linked with decreased symptoms of depression and 30% lower odds of experiencing depression. Maybe the pandemic taught us that the “Arrival Fallacy”, i.e. the harder we work won’t necessarily make us happier.

There’s no doubt women are still ambitious, since 2015, the number of women in the C-suite has increased from 17 to 28 per cent, but ambition looks different to how it looked during the Girlboss era, the desire to work unsolicited hours is gone because the pay-off doesn’t always equate to advancement and having the time to reflect on life during 2020, the real ambition may simply be to just have a better work/life balance.

Therefore it is up to companies to create environments that cater to those needs of the wellbeing of their staff, and help women feel like they can be ‘’soft’’ at work and the goal? Is not about having the best of both worlds, but spending more time in a world that makes you feel really good mentally and physically.

So, on the future agenda, maybe wild swimming in the ladies' pond, watering the plum tree, walking to get a coffee from my favourite cafe and birdwatching all before an afternoon briefing call?

Ooh, now I could totally get down with that.