Reese Witherspoon is trying to remove the "stigma" from the word "ambition" when it comes to women.
The 41-year-old actress believes that women who are said to be ambitious are also thought of as "selfish or self-serving" and has been working to smash that stigma as she says ambitious women will "change society".
She said: "A couple of years ago I wrote a speech of Glamour Women of the Year about why ambition in women is considered a dirty word. And we do kind of think, they’ve done all these studies at Harvard and Colombia about how women who have ambitious qualities are seen as selfish or self-serving, and it’s actually completely the opposite. Usually they have a mission or a drive to help other people, or accomplish something.
"So I’m just trying to take the stigma off the word so we can encourage more little girls to be ambitious, because I do think that’s how society will change."
And the ‘Big Little Lies’ star has always been ambitious herself, and once told her teacher in third grade that she wanted to be "the first female president", and was pleasantly surprised when she got a positive response.
She added: "I remember in third grade, they went around the room and said ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And this one wanted to be doctor, that one wanted to be an astronaut, and I said ‘I want to be the first female president of the United States of America.’ And you know what? To my teacher’s credit, she goes ‘I’m gonna vote for you Reesie.’ And I just thought, wasn’t that sweet?"
Reese gets to explore the idea of ambitious women in her new movie ‘Home Again’, in which she plays a women trying to discover the "next chapter" of her life.
Speaking about the role on ‘Good Morning America’, Reese said: "My character is separated. She’s got two little kids. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her life. She has to move back home. She feels really untethered. It’s really about a woman finding what the next chapter in her life is gonna be."
Reese Witherspoon encouraging women to be ‘ambitious’
