I have always been ambitious. But if you ask me whether my ambition has looked the same throughout my life, the answer is no. 

And I think that is true for many women. 

There are phases in life when your career gets your complete attention. You are hungry for the next opportunity, the next role, the next big move. You can put in the hours, travel when required, take risks and say yes without thinking too much about what that yes will mean for the rest of your life. 

Then life evolves. 

You get married. You become a mother. Your family needs you differently. Your own priorities change. Sometimes you take a break. Sometimes you continue working but consciously decide that work cannot get the best of you for that period. And sometimes there is no major life event at all — you simply start wanting different things. 

I have gone through different versions of this myself. 

There have been phases when I have been completely consumed by work and what I wanted to achieve. There have also been phases when other parts of my life needed more of me. My ambition didn’t disappear during those times, but it wasn’t always sitting at the top of my priority list. 

I think we are too quick to interpret that as a woman becoming less ambitious. 

A woman takes a career break after having a child and we wonder whether she is still serious about her career. She turns down a demanding opportunity because it doesn’t work for her life at that moment, and somehow it becomes a comment on her drive. She comes back after a few years and suddenly has to prove that she still wants it. 

But why do we assume ambition has only one setting — ON or OFF? 

Maybe ambition has seasons. 

There can be a time to chase it aggressively. A time to keep it ticking quietly in the background. A time to consciously deprioritise it. And then a time when it comes roaring back because life has created space for it again. 

I can see this in my own journey. 

What I wanted in my twenties is different from what I wanted in my thirties. What excites me today is different again. At one point, ambition was largely about my career.  

The ambition is still there. The lens has changed. 

And perhaps that is the part we need to become more comfortable with — especially as women. 

Deprioritising something is not the same as giving it up. 

Choosing your family at one stage doesn’t mean you have chosen against your career. Wanting to slow down today doesn’t mean you won’t want to accelerate tomorrow. And wanting something completely different from what you wanted ten years ago doesn’t make the earlier ambition less real. 

Life changes. We change with it. 

So perhaps we should stop asking women whether they are still ambitious. 

A more interesting question might be: 

What does ambition look like for you now?