From a Politics of Dilemmas to a Politics of Paradoxes

The Role of Paradoxical Thinking in Leadership Processes

In organizational literature, paradoxes ¹ are defined as “contradictory yet interrelated elements that appear simultaneously and persist over time” (Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 382). Paradoxes are thereby differentiated from dilemmas composed of trade-offs that need to be resolved with either/or decisions (Smith, 2014). Researchers assign value to reframing paradoxical tensions as issues to engage in and embrace, rather than solve, while sustaining both poles of a tension (e.g., Bartunek & Rynes, 2014). Below, we provide our theoretical framework for leadership development within a perspective of paradox. We draw on organizational research on paradoxes and on critical feminist pedagogy, while highlighting their role in women’s leadership development processes. Then, we present the program in which we work with women on leadership development. Finally, we present case studies that demonstrate the ways in which we work.

The GIFT Leadership Development Context

GIFT was established in 2007 within Bar-Ilan University’s Graduate Gender Studies Program. The first and only program of its kind in Israel, GIFT integrates two main bodies of knowledge: feminist theory and experiential knowledge from feminist activism. GIFT aims to nurture feminist leaders who promote meaningful social change by mentoring students to understand how knowledge from the field and theory inform one another. GIFT’s flagship seminar, “Gender in the Field: Translating Feminist Theory into Social Action,” is taught by the authors of this article. It is structured as a year-long seminar in which we meet with the students once a week. Seminar participants are required to engage intensively in social change projects (investing 4-6 hours weekly throughout the year). The course proposes a circular process of action, study, reflection, and evaluation. One focal point of the course is identifying and conceptualizing central dilemmas that emerge from students’ experiences in their activism as a starting point to enable a shift from a perspective of dilemmas to that of paradoxes. The paradoxical pedagogy is facilitated by inviting diverse voices and sources of knowledge, enabling them to interact critically in unique learning spaces.

The students, 12 to 20 women in each cohort of GIFT, ⁴ were recruited and accepted with diversity and inclusivity in mind. This is reflected in the participants’ age range (mid-20s to late-60s) and varied ethnicities (Ashkenazi, Mizrachi, Ethiopian, and Arab), nationalities (Israeli, Palestinian), sexual orientations, religions (Jewish, Muslim, Christian), religiosity (secular, masorti, orthodox, ultra-orthodox), and knowledge base (varied disciplines and professions). The faculty of the course (the authors of this article) also came from diverse backgrounds, representing different identity groups within Israeli society, with regard to age, religiosity, sexual orientation, academic fields, and activist background. This potpourri of representation and identities enabled a rich platform, in the form of an “in-door laboratory,” for learning about dilemmas and tensions of leadership and social change (see the appendix for more details).

In what follows, we discuss two case studies that clarify what we mean by a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes and how it contributes specifically to women’s leadership development. The case studies presented are of students’ “dilemmas” in their field work as analyzed by them in their seminar papers, and they differ in terms of the level on which the tension raised was experienced. The tension in the first case study focuses on the individual level (the student’s exploration of the tensions of her activism within the organization). The second case study introduces a dilemma in which the tension is experienced on the organizational level (between a feminist organization and the surrounding community). We show how trying to unpack these “dilemmas” reveals their “paradoxical” nature and argue that this process serves as fertile ground for women’s leadership development. The third section focuses on the classroom dynamics and analyzes ways of encouraging experimentation with paradoxical learning.

The Wounded Caretaker: Unraveling Empowerment

“Wounded caring” is the term used by Adva, ⁵ a White, Jewish, middle-class student in the GIFT seminar, to illustrate her position as an activist and to conceptualize the dilemmas that emerged from this activism. During her participation in GIFT, Adva chose to work in the field of community advocacy, in an empowerment project for girls and young women. The project is located in a marginal yet rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in the center of Israel composed of Jews, most of whom are Mizrahi, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. “Mizrahi” is a term used to describe Jews of Middle Eastern or of North African origin, constructed by the Israeli Western-dominant discourse as the ethnic-Eastern “Other” interrelated with the Palestinians, who suffer from double-bind discrimination on the basis of national and racial identity. Their perception as the “Other” has been shaping and justifying unequal distribution of resources, leading to the entrenchment of binary-ethnic division (Khazzoom 2003).

In her fieldwork diary, Adva describes the young women who constituted the project’s target group as “occupying multifaceted marginality.” This marginality, which will unfold in the following analysis of Adva’s activist journey, introduces some predictable dilemmas, as a result of the structural gaps and hierarchies between Adva—the trainer—who identifies herself as White and middle class, and the project’s trainees, who constitute a minority (i.e., race, class, and nationality).

However, in addition to the unequivocal ethical challenges embedded in bringing together an educated, privileged trainer and marginalized constituency, a personal dilemma emerged for Adva:

I had a dilemma regarding possible courses of actions with the girls, given my own identification and [emotional] involvement, [due] to my personal wound, in addition to the issue of multiculturalism and [differences] in background and education.

In her fieldwork diary, Adva underscores the myriad ways in which the personal histories and wounds of both the trainees and the trainers (as women who have suffered gender-based discrimination and abuse) bring to life supposedly resolved vulnerabilities for the trainer:

[I relate to] the effects of being in proximity with anguish, distress, and helplessness and how it affected [my] perception of the world as [a] safe [place].

The fact that vulnerabilities may be contagious and reemerge, reminding Adva of her personal wounds, challenges the linear concept of empowerment and surpassing and complicates the notion of progress. In other words, Adva identified the fact that while she and other trainers have managed to acquire social capital, many women are still subjugated and have little access to resources and personal safety. Yet the trainees’ stories remind those who emerged from subjugation that social realities have not changed, leading to a blurring of the distinction between trainers/trainees, subjugation/empowerment, and agency and lack thereof.

The contagious vulnerability and the collapse of these divisions will serve as our vantage point for critically engaging concepts of transformation and empowerment in leadership development, and for asking: “What kind of leadership for change is possible once linear concepts are challenged?” and “What kind of learning process takes place once convictions of ‘progress’ and ‘success’ are undermined by unresolved social oppression?”

To explore these questions, we employ the analytical concept of “haunting” introduced by Gordon (1995) as a state in which repressed or unresolved social violence makes itself known, especially when it is supposedly over and done with. The unresolved social violence that reverberates in the case study brought here is related to class, race, national, and gendered inequalities, which persist in the trainees’ lives, and which haunts the staff and volunteers.

The way social oppression makes itself known to Adva is through the act of self-narration, a common practice in the project, and in social change initiatives, where both trainers and trainees share pieces of their life stories with each other. Storytelling helps shape public language, generate communities, create spaces for stories to be heard, and is a powerful means for claiming rights (Plummer, 1995). Moreover, stories of self-transformation underscore a becoming that produces a character in process, a movement from oppression to salvation, emphasizing a linear temporality of progress (Radstone, 2007). Understandably, Adva is shocked to discover that the linear temporality, which frames her own journey from a history of wounds to a prosperous present, collapses in the face of social realities she assumed she left behind.

This proximity to others’ vulnerability and helplessness serves as a reminder and a testimony of institutional abandonment and violence that affect girls, families, and communities. Since the narrative of progress and personal “empowerment” is contested by the social realities witnessed by Adva, she ponders about the project’s methods of intervention:

So . . . the staff interfered. They started a conversation [with one of the girls], mirroring to her the hardship of her life and her [failure] to manage it, stating that “you cannot continue living like this.” In other words, they were saying that she should move forward from the stuck place, to find a job, pay her debts, etc.

Intervention in the project is mediated through storytelling. The trainees share their troubles in order to acquire help in their everyday hardships, and the staff “mirrors” those hardships by rearticulating them, in order to encourage the trainees to “move forward.” In other words, one narrates oneself to the trainers in order to get “back on track.” ⁶ The trainers were those who held the power to disclose and produce knowledge and make the “diagnosis” about “society’s Others” by narrating and attempting to rewrite the girls’ life stories (Spivak, 1988), thus contributing to stabilizing the existing social order (hooks, 1990). ⁷

Later in her journal, Adva borrows the concept of “developmental assumption” (Tom, 1995, p. 172) from a paper read in the GIFT seminar, in order to reflect on the strategy adopted by the project’s staff. According to “the developmental assumption,” both trainers and trainees share the same developmental trajectory, but the trainees have not come as far down the same road. This assumption is congruent with the “it gets better” script of progress, which reflects neoliberal ideas of moving from marginality to success and belonging according to White, middle-class values. ⁸ As Barbara Cruikshank (1994) asserts, the “will to empower” underscores self-government and autonomy. Moreover, the empowerment paradigm emphasizes the ambiguous relationship with the target population whom it paradoxically hopes to mobilize by defining it as “powerless” (p. 30). On this, Adva notes,

I was perceiving my [role] as the obstacle-remover, down a trajectory which presumably leads to a better life. . . . The problem was that I assumed that these girls understand good life according to my parameters and values; those of a privileged White woman.

Empowerment projects, such as the one Adva is involved in, are imbued with a regenerative futurity and a multicultural “diverse” inclusivity (Taylor, 2011). Possible critiques are of such projects challenge the privileged and normative investments and reject the progress discourse as impractical, homogenizing, and exclusionary (Goltz, 2012). Instead of regenerating communities, such a progress discourse disrupts them, demarcating those worthy of empowerment from those deemed “lost” or “stuck” (Taylor, 2011). Adva elaborates further,

During my work with the girls, I’ve come to understand that I too, use the developmental assumption as the explanatory means for interpreting their lack of career ambition as irresponsibility or as refusing to take responsibility for their lives, presumably expecting others (such as myself) to take care of them. That is why, at some point, I felt compelled to nurture ambition among the trainees, assuming that they are on the same trajectory as me, only they need a little “push” [ . . . ] in order to get back “on track.”

Using what she defines as “the alternative narrative,” Adva decides to use her own life story to motivate the trainees to adopt a different perception of life:

The differences between me and the girls in access to resources, class, etc. made me feel as if I’m walking on a very thin rope. I could never tell in which cases my self-exposure helps the girls and in which cases it paralyzes or discourages them. My self-exposure as a caregiver might empower the trainees, seeing me as a role model and thinking that, in spite of the difficulties I experienced, I managed to climb the career ladder. And if I managed, so can they. However, some aspects in my personal history [ . . . ] might create frustration because of the cultural and class differences between us . . . since I had resources which they don’t have. So the trainees might feel frustrated when they understand that the change I generated in my life was not the outcome of personal capacities but rather my cultural capital.

Adva assumes that sharing her autobiography is a legitimate feminist practice based on the belief in the transformative power of personal stories. Moreover, she assumes that sharing life stories may be a radically subversive action, since Adva, as the trainer, trespasses traditional boundaries of self-disclosure and confession, which defines hierarchical relations between the professional/trainer who listens and the deviant/trainee who confesses. Yet, while destabilizing hierarchal order, Adva comes to understand that her personal progress narrative actually underscores the differences in access to resources, and reproduces, rather than challenges, social gaps.

Indeed, the logic of empowerment collapses, leaving Adva with a paradox. Her own progress narrative and her desire to lead and bring about change, which should have inspired and empowered, were irrelevant to the trainees in the unequal social context. This divided context is manifested in the trainees’ experience of multigenerational poverty, their limited access to education and health services, the precarious job market, and general institutional neglect. The critique offered in this section recognizes both the radical potentiality for personal stories of emergence as a way to foster change, as well as their exclusionary and normativizing effect, which may contribute to the reinforcement of the existing social structure (Goltz, 2012).

Favoring a model of critical frustration (Goltz, 2012; Harris, 2015), this section suggests working with narratives to move from a frame of dilemma of “either/or” to a frame of paradoxical thinking, which allows activist-leaders to trace and name the privileges that hide in narratives of redemption. It points to the rupture and division between leaders for change and the led and employs those stuck places as sites for exploring the potential tensions. This is a way to keep moving within the impossibility of empowering, teaching, and leading, to produce and learn from ruptures, failures, and refusals to “move on” (Lather, 1998).

We contend that such an experiential and critical reflective process, as analyzed in this section, contributes to the process of developing accountability with regard to complex power relations and turns “leadership” into a capacity shared among women involved in social change instead of according it to those initiating the intervention (“the leaders”).

Reveal or Conceal? The Paradox of Voice and Silence

The interplay between “disclosure/revealing” versus “concealing” was addressed by Misaam, a student and an activist in the GIFT seminar. She drew on this tension to illustrate the ideological dilemma of positioning the nongovernmental organization (NGO) she was volunteering at, and its individual staff members, within the community in which they operated. The unique organization in which Misaam operates, within the Israeli-Arab community, is called Moona. This innovative organization focuses on the sexual education of adolescents in their schools and on education within the community on topics of health promotion and raising consciousness regarding sexuality and human rights. Moona aims to use culturally sensitive methods to change existing attitudes and perceptions toward sexuality. One of its guiding principles is “community involvement” through encouraging a pluralistic discourse and active involvement of leading agencies, and stakeholders within the community.

The aim of working collaboratively within the community poses a dilemma regarding the way the members of Moona define their collective identity and ideology. On the one hand, the organization holds a clear feminist identity and agenda, which Misaam, and other members of this radical organization, wished to promote. On the other, Misaam and her colleagues felt the need to conceal this identity and agenda. For example, Misaam notes,

We are working within a traditional and patriarchal society [the local Arab society], at a stage of change and sharp return to tradition and religion. Our discourse is radical, arguing for women’s rights over their own bodies. However, inevitably, in certain spaces, with certain people, and in certain situations, we subjugate and bow our heads, and use the “kosher” discourse of the society by abandoning words that might evoke rejection [of our messages] and limit cooperation.

Misaam describes a situation in which the attempt to advance change by promoting alternative radical discourses in the Arab community forced Moona members to reconstruct and compromise the organization’s discourse regarding sexuality, at times “revealing” and at other times “concealing” its messages. She expresses this as follows:

My dilemma is our constant fluctuation and movement within the discourse and whether our discourse should be declared or concealed, while using techniques of ambiguity and playing around with our choice of words.

This dilemma points to the tension that exists between the attempt to lead and to promote change in the public sphere in an open manner while simultaneously holding on to the constant need to gain approval from community members, who might be opposed to these ideas. Thus, evading conflicts surrounding ideas related to gender and sexuality reinforces and reconstructs the existing norms according to which women’s sexuality should be concealed.

Within this frame, Misaam did not describe a situation in which she was forced to either reveal or conceal, but a situation in which she needed to do both simultaneously. In an attempt to deal with this complex task, she described working with two different communities. The first community was a group of women who participated in the training sessions on topics of sexuality and equality:

Our approach is that of listening, of deep attentiveness and of respect for their point of view regarding their way of living. We also try to respond to them drawing on their own experiences and the place where they are situated [their standpoint], in an attempt not to change them, but to enable them to think in a critical manner and to find alternatives to issues that are troubling them.

The second group, composed of people with leadership roles in the community, provoked a defensive tone:

We are defensive when confronted with people in key positions, who are used to treating others’ experiences in a disrespectful way and [to] dictate to them [values and courses of action] that do not fit them. We understand that our radical discourse is not effective when presenting our concepts straightforwardly. This is especially true in traditional environments, because our discourse is threatening; undermining the values of our interlocutors. But in an organization such as ours, with a clear agenda, how many times can we try and understand their viewpoints? Accept the accusations [toward us] and not become defensive. . . . Thus, we have developed a political strategy which allows us to achieve our goals without threatening the people that we are working with.

According to Misaam, the organization employs different strategies with different audiences. However, in both cases, there is a sense of the ongoing “play” between revealing and concealing their ideology, although for different reasons, as part of their strategy to work paradoxically. In the first case, the organizational ideology is not revealed out of respect for the women’s standpoints, whereas in the second case, they concealed it out of defense and to maintain their capacity to work with this community. The ability to be flexible in the degrees of revelation and concealment and the use of subversion in a multidimensional and complex way when approaching different community members is described as a process of maturation of the organization. The choice not to prioritize the public proclamation of the organization’s politics over its capacity to work with traditional communities emphasizes a process in which the praxis simultaneously shapes and restructures the political agenda, as the student maintains: “Our strategy for intervention is the result of our praxis; it does not precede it.”

Misaam further explains that the powerful urge to conceal is not only an external demand raised by a traditional community but also echoes the fears and complexities of the activists themselves. She explains as follows:

There are issues we address more than others, because we ourselves have our own fears and concerns that don’t allow us to deal with them, such as sexual intercourse before marriage, sexual orientation, masturbation, and virginity. We were raised according to traditional values that dictate virginity and ban sex before marriage; so we address it, by discussing the phenomenon of patriarchal violence that has been legitimized in the name of these values. We were raised to believe that homosexuality is a form of social deviancy, so we address it, by discussing the personal freedom that has been robbed from us. This raises a broader question: have we ourselves [i.e., the staff] left tradition behind? Honestly, I can say that I am not sure. Since the non-traditional values did not stem from my culture, it raises the question of whether we should adopt new values that are not ours and were created in a different social and political context. The conflict between our internalized values and Western discourses of human rights raises an important question. This is why I think that part of our dilemma has to do with us and our identification with our own traditional culture, whether consciously or unconsciously.

What began as a dilemma—“to reveal or conceal”—that is seemingly a classic feminist tension between “voice” and “silence”—evolved, in Misaam’s understanding, into an ongoing tension that she and her colleagues did not aim to resolve. Rather, they accepted the paradoxical fluctuation discerning creative ways to “be” and “do” within their ambivalent position. Rejecting the mode of linear logic often thought to precede activists’ interventions when fostering social change, we suggest viewing it as an ongoing cyclical process, a “dynamic equilibrium” of managing tensions.

Paradoxical Learning Spaces: Multiple Identities and Ways of Knowing and Acting

Now that the readers have a better idea of the struggles and tensions our students face in their field work, we would like to focus on the course structure and the learning space we craft to enable a learning process that allows for a shift from dilemma to paradox to occur. We present three major features that characterize the pedagogical perspective we use: multiple identities and identity tensions in the academic setting, in the field setting, and the multiple ways of knowing and action we explore within the course.

Discussion

Through exploring a transformation from a “politics of dilemmas” to a “politics of paradoxes,” as a way of fostering women’s leadership development, we proposed a model composed of several principles. The first principle suggests implementing a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes that encourages dynamic multiplicity of thoughts and actions. It facilitates ongoing negotiation of individual and collective identities and reframes intersectional oppressions. Such pedagogy is both introspective and outwardly focused on action, while attending to the in-between-ness of relationships and their intersections with power relations. Furthermore, it strives for the development of a leadership that can escape from binary-contradictory perspectives by holding on to paradoxical thought.

The second principle suggests that implementing a feminist pedagogy of paradoxes allows for restructuring and shifting iterations of power relations and hierarchies, eroding deeply rooted dichotomies (leader/follower, powerful/vulnerable). This enables the discovery and creation of novel forms of influence, and social activism, which foster the exploration of multiple identities and the ability to work within shifting structures of privilege, while holding on to more complex, humble, and realistic leadership perspectives. This social political perspective can protect women leaders from merely replicating the power structure and privileges sustained by the hegemonic system, in which men (and privileged women) mostly hold the power and ability to lead.

The third principle suggests that even though a paradoxical framework may produce negative affect such as “stuckness,” paralysis, feeling haunted, and confusion, we believe that it is important to develop a capacity to create movement within a paradoxical space. A paradoxical framework encourages complex learning and experimentation and contributes to the crystallization of mature activism and leadership in a complex context. It is also helpful in equipping women with the resilience necessary for becoming activists who can persevere for long periods and lead in a sustainable manner.

The fourth principle is that of holding on to the complex tension between theory and practice and between academia and social change. Literature and discourses by academics and practitioners addressing leadership of social change tend to view these spheres as separate, contradictory, and hierarchical (Bartunek & Rynes, 2014). We contend that by moving back and forth between theory and action, learning and doing, academia and practice, with awareness of the tensions, women can gain better insights into developing a mature leadership identity that is informed by both spheres, fostering novel ways of leading.

Finally, this pedagogy challenges the linear notions of leadership and the binary between masculine and feminine models of leadership. The expectation that leaders embody masculine/agential characteristics—decisive, assertive, and rational—has been exposed as a mechanism that excludes women from leadership positions (Kark & Eagly, 2010; Kark & Waismel-Manor, 2005; Kark, Waismel-Manor, & Shamir, 2012). The paradoxical pedagogy underscores nonlinear, circular, and multidimensional ways of thinking/acting, thereby emphasizing a novel way of conceptualizing influence. This may enable women to express their own voice, ways of thought, and modes of leading, without surrendering to a fixed, linear, and coherent external model of “leadership.” Moreover, this pedagogy can allow women to feel better suited to lead.

A critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes is one form of women’s leadership development among many, and it too has its drawbacks. Although we have suggested it can contribute to women’s ability to gain influence in dynamic settings, paradoxical thinking might also delay or even stifle women’s development and influence for several reasons. First, not all individuals handle ambiguity easily, and some may feel burdened holding on to paradoxes. Second, there are contexts in which paradoxes may limit action, since a major drive for leadership in social action is a sense of urgency and a strong voice (Taylor, 1995). At times, examining different aspects simultaneously may reduce the magnitude of action and influence. Finally, strong emotions (e.g., rage and anger) might play a central role in mobilizing women’s leadership in various situations (e.g., fight against oppression and for social justice). Such strong emotions and their ability to become contingent may be tempered by reflexive-paradoxical thinking. Nonetheless, we postulate that a pedagogy of paradoxes may be highly useful for the development of women’s leadership. Through struggling with paradoxical emotions, emotional complexity develops, and this can provide needed leadership abilities that enable gathering of rich information and facilitate women’s ability to make adaptable decisions. However, it should be used with care and not automatically as an ultimate tool or remedy.

We have focused on the development of women’s leadership in an academic context that highlights theoretical thought and social action. We explored tensions and dualities in the field of social activism charged with great complexities. We believe that this pedagogy for women’s leadership development can be extended to other contexts and programs (e.g., education in schools, MBA programs) and to other sectors (i.e., private sector); however, this needs to be further explored.

On a more personal note, each of the authors of this article comes from a different political, intellectual, and personal background, and we are positioned differentially within academia. While at times conflicting, it is precisely this rich multiplicity that enriches coteaching and coauthoring and advances the kind of leadership fostered by this program. Yet we purposely seek to be fruitfully uncomfortable so as to promote further examination as each of us probes assumptions, shares doubt, and contributes to our co-constructed knowledge. In our work with the students, we created a safe space, but the purpose of this method was to encourage women to develop as leaders; to open up to risk, change, and growth; and to hold on to tensions and doubts. In the words of the famous Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai:

The place where we are right

Is hard and trampled

Like a yard.

But doubts and loves

Dig up the world

Like a mole, a plow.

The process of learning/teaching women leadership for social change—like feminist identities and activism itself—is not a linear progression nor a dialectic process but an experiential, disruptive, unexpected, circular, unsettling, haunting, enriching, and gratifying practice. It is a paradoxical laboratory.