From a Politics of Dilemmas to a Politics of Paradoxes

Abstract

Transformational learning is a process resulting in deep and significant change in habitual patterns of identity, thought, emotion, and action, enabling new approaches to role enactment. This article explores how moving from a framework of dilemmas, which require solutions and one-sided choices, to a framework of paradoxes that embraces tensions and contradictions can contribute to meaningful transformational learning in the context of women’s leadership development. Drawing on recent theories of paradoxes and on critical feminist theory, we propose a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes for developing women’s leadership of social change enterprises. This perspective is put forth based on our analysis of an experiential course in a graduate gender studies program wherein participants take on leadership roles and interrogate them, by integrating theoretical discussions, reflection, and practical engagement in social activism. We use case studies from our students’ experiences in the field and in the classroom to demonstrate and explore the use of paradoxical thinking for teaching complex modes of leadership. We then show how fundamental, unresolvable paradoxes can be generative of novel ways of enacting social change leadership. We suggest several advantages and implications that this critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes can have on the development of women’s leadership.

Keywords

paradox feminist and critical pedagogy postcolonial theory women’s leadership empowerment social change practice gender ethnicity class

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast . . .

—Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

Leadership has traditionally been understood as an individual-level skill. Within this tradition, leadership development is focused on intrapersonal skills and abilities (e.g., Day, 2000) as well as on the inner experience of shaping a leadership identity (e.g., Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, & McKee, 2014). A complementary perspective approaches leadership and its development as a relational, socially situated, and socially constructed process that engages different community members (Day & Harrison, 2007; DeRue & Ashford, 2010; Kark, 2011b). In the current article, we shift focus from the intrapersonal processes and the interpersonal/relational processes of leadership development to the wider social-political fabric, using a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes.

This article addresses the role of paradoxes in contributing to the process of women’s leadership development. We contend that paradoxes can be an effective pedagogical perspective and a vital skill in training women leaders. Furthermore, we wish to extend the current scholarship on leadership development by introducing notions of critical feminist pedagogy and by proposing that effective leadership should abandon hierarchical notions of leader versus led or empowering versus empowered. By discussing leadership in the context of feminist social change, we argue that understanding leadership and leadership development as a linear, stable, and hierarchical theoretical concept and praxis might reproduce hegemonic scripts and power relations rather than dismantle them.

This perspective evolved from our 6-year experience in the “Gender in the Field Track” (GIFT; see the appendix) in the Gender Studies Graduate Program in which we teach. Problematizing concepts such as “transition,” “development,” and “empowerment,” we propose a theory of movement within paradox. Drawing on the classroom experience and on case studies of graduate students, we explore transformational learning and the discursive spaces in which a shift from “dilemmas” to “paradoxes” occurs, as a means to contribute to leadership development.

In this work, we draw on organizational theory conceptualizations of paradox (e.g., Bartunek & Rynes, 2014; Smith & Lewis, 2011) in conjunction with similar notions of nonlinearity, multiple identities, and ways of knowing (e.g., Lather, 1998; Spivak, 2012) in feminist thought. More specifically, the aims of this study are threefold. First, we aim to show how women experience transformational learning, moving from a frame of resolving dilemmas to a frame of working with paradoxes. Second, we offer a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes, highlighting the adoption of ongoing critical feminist perspectives and practices throughout the process of leading change. Finally, we explore how holding onto ambiguities and multiplicities enables leaders-in-training to experiment with social activism from a critical feminist perspective in ways that sustain movement rather than becoming paralyzed and create a fertile ground for women’s development into responsible leaders.

The Role of Paradoxical Thinking in Leadership Processes

In organizational literature, paradoxes¹ 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.

Leadership Development and Paradoxes

Pursuing gender equity and a feminist agenda within organizational contexts creates a need to cope with competing demands. As the complexity and ambiguity of the environment grows, leaders of social enterprises experience increased pressures to manage embedded dualities and contradictory demands (e.g., Besharov & Smith, 2014; Kraatz & Block, 2008).²

Paradox theory offers meaningful insight into these challenges (Lewis, 2000; Smith & Lewis, 2011). It focuses on the dynamic nature of paradoxes whereby engaging one aspect of the dilemma triggers and highlights the other, fueling ongoing cycles over time (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009). Effective management of strategic paradoxes affects leaders’ performance, organizational outcomes, and future organization survival (Jay, 2013). Recent studies depict different strategies and approaches to managing paradoxes, which include reframing tensions to expose their paradoxical nature and endorsing the “both/and” possibility by keeping competing and conflictual demands alive and upfront (Smith, 2014).

Recent studies on leadership development demonstrate that tensions can contribute to leadership development. For example, Jarvis, Gulati, McCririck, and Simpson (2012) contend that “tensions and apparent contradictions provoke change and transformation in ways that are often unpredictable. Consequently, learning comes from unexpected places, emerging in the messy complexity of our everyday experience” (p. 41). They further suggest that it is worthwhile to move away from resolving tensions, since leadership development strengthens resilience when it teaches to “know in the context of not-knowing and . . . to work with the uncertainty and anxiety that arise from embracing these tensions” (p. 42).

In a similar vein, Debebe (2011) suggests that encountering a disorienting dilemma in a women’s leadership development process can contribute to transformative change. Smith, Besharov, Wessels, and Chertok (2012) further stress the importance of transformational experiences for gaining deeper personal growth in the leadership development process, highlighting the notion of paradox rather than dilemma. They contend that adopting a paradoxical lens can contribute to the development of more sophisticated interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, and leadership capabilities. Smith and coauthors (Smith; 2014; Smith et al., 2012) suggest several practices for managing tensions that are vital in training people aspiring to lead,³ among them a “dynamic equilibrium” that encourages accepting paradoxes and wavering between choosing and accommodating strategies, shifting from rational framing of dilemmas to discursive and critical thinking of paradoxes.

This emerging body of knowledge highlights the importance of paradoxical pedagogical frames, yet we are unaware of prior examinations of how this perspective plays out in women’s leadership and feminist pedagogy. Since feminist theory is most useful when attempting to understand women’s leadership (e.g., Kark, 2004), we are interested in exploring insights about working with paradoxes, as we believe this tool may be a powerful way to link feminist theory with women’s action, agency, and learning to lead. In this article, we suggest several implications for the practice of women’s leadership that build on paradox, linking this to feminist thought and pedagogy.

Critical Pedagogy

Similar to the paradoxical framework, critical feminist pedagogy endorses a nonlinear and contradictory logic. In a review of the development of critical feminist pedagogy scholarship, Lather (1998) underscores its commitment to social justice. Emerging in the 1980s and grounded in the scholarship of the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, and Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy is an ensemble of practices, which nurtures contradictory voices, counternarratives, and competing understandings. Moving away from the “humanist attachments to a dialectic of truth” and toward “contributing to struggles for social justice” (Lather, 1998, p. 497), Lather advocates against developing a universalizing pedagogy grounded in the rhetoric of “salvation” (of the powerless by those with social power), and instead favors openness, passage, and nonmastery. A feminist approach to critical pedagogy must recognize how narratives of salvation enforce privilege and how pretensions of “emancipating” or “empowering” a less privileged “Other” have become a habitual discourse and common practice in feminism. Drawing our attention to problematic routines in feminist postcolonial critique, Spivak (2012) asserts that the capacity to unveil those “habits” and to expose domination within critical thought provides the infrastructure for critical pedagogy.

Spivak’s critique is twofold: first, critical feminist scholarship points to how the postcolonial “Other” seeks to recover a subject position by turning to hegemonic scripts and discourses (Spivak, 1988). Second, in addition to the problematic cooptation into hegemonic scripts, the postcolonial “Other” is not a homogeneous constituency. It is divided between elite, and more privileged “Other,” on the one hand, and the subaltern on the other. Subalternity, according to Spivak, is not just a general term or a synonym of any “Other” lower class group, but an “Other” that is to be removed from all lines of social-mobility (Spivak, 2005), including having no capacity to “speak” for oneself or to use knowledge (thought, reasoning, and language) that is not Western or hegemonic, in order to be “heard.” Further drawing on these ideas, Ellsworth (1989) maintains that key assumptions, and pedagogical practices, such as “empowerment,” “student voice,” and “dialogue,” perpetuate relations of domination. She emphasizes that through putting prescriptions concerning empowerment into practice, “we produced results that were not only unhelpful, but actually exacerbated the very conditions we were trying to work against, including Eurocentrism, racism, sexism, classism . . .” (p. 298).

Hence, critical feminist pedagogy requires a theory and practice that allows the subaltern to cease being an object of benevolence in human rights discourse, as well as to cease being the target of empowerment efforts by those who are more privileged. Asking what kinds of practices may encourage and train ethical imagination of women on both sides of this power division (Morton 2011), our article traces experiences of ruptures, failures, and breaks as sites of learning (Ellsworth, 1997; Lather, 1998).

Thus, critical pedagogy complements theory of paradox as both constitute nonlinear ways of thinking, both focus on nonbinary and nonhierarchical logic, and advocate dynamic, nonstable, fluid structures, and unresolved tensions. Similar to theory of paradoxes, critical pedagogy underscores a liminal position, between transformative discourses (by advocating for change) and seemingly stable structures (e.g., social institutions within which these efforts for change are taking place.). Thus, both can inform leadership development processes that are aimed at social change.

This current article is situated in the Israeli feminist context, where feminists of color’s scholarship points to similar divisions between the elite and those perceived as marginal and as removed from all lines of social mobility (Dahan-Kalev, 2002; Lavie, 2014). We aim to critically address women’s leadership development by exploring the learning processes undertaken by women who take leading roles in changing social realities while facing social divisions between themselves and the communities in which they act. We name these learning processes a “critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes” as it incorporates scholarship on both paradox and critical pedagogy. Thus, this article proposes a framework of learning from tensions, ruptures, and breaks that can be viewed as enabling sites and valuable tools for leadership development.

In what follows we describe the context and structure of the GIFT program to provide an overview and to better situate our women’s leadership development efforts, by presenting the characteristics of the students and the teaching methods.

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.

Multiple Identities in the Academic Setting

As this diverse learning environment is situated in the Gender Studies Program, it would seem to follow that the common ground among participants would be their feminist consciousness, rendering their feminist identity particularly salient to this leadership-development setting. However, such a predominant, seemingly mutual identity could potentially suppress and crowd out other aspects of participants’ identities, whereby the multiplicity of identity is denied and one feels forced to make an exclusive choice of a predominant affiliation (Sen, 2006). This process poses a problem for leadership development (Debebe & Reinert, 2014). For this reason, Debebe and Reinert (2014) suggest structuring the learning environment as a “safe space” for exploration of multiple identities. In order to enable the women in the program to contest and hold on to unresolved identity paradoxes, we use several pedagogical practices to structure a safe learning space.

The first pedagogical practice we use to foster experimentation with paradoxes within the classroom is actively problematizing the identities of the students. We start with the focal feminist identity, by questioning what “being a feminist activist” and what “being a leader” means, rather than positing it as a common ground, a goal, or a prerequisite uniting all participants. Indeed, despite taking part in this course, framed as a course on feminist activism and social leadership, many participants felt free to express open ambivalence and resistance toward the “feminist” and the “leadership” labels, debate their meanings, and continuously question whether they consider themselves feminists, activists, or leaders at all. Such pondering arises when participants choose to bring their other identities to the fore, using them to highlight differences—and intersectional power relations—within the group of students.⁹ One of the students wrote in her blog:

The questions are part of the doing. The dilemmas are part of the activism. Every new blogpost raises another query . . . it doesn’t matter what kind of feminism you bring with you. And it doesn’t matter if you always hold the same feminist voice.

Both identity and activism were perceived as a dynamic space characterized by circular movement. The working process in the classroom allowed for raising doubts and critiques from each student holding different identities, while concrete resolutions were discussed as pertaining to a certain time and context, without erasing alternative possibilities that continued to exist simultaneously in other dimensions.

Furthermore, since the students were recruited with diversity and inclusivity in mind, they represented a wide variety of the Israeli society (e.g., ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and religion). This resulted in representations of multiple social identities within the classroom, leading to tensions and conflicts among the students. During class, when students reflected on their dilemmas from their field work, they were encouraged to bring forth the tensions between them and their classmates in order to explore within a safe space how their diversity in access to power and resources triggered different undertakings of the dilemmas, and how grappling with unresolved conflicting feminist perspectives, informed by their different societal positioning, can enrich their field work. Thus, the ability to problematize identities enabled students to raise tensions and allowed for these to stay unresolved in a paradoxical space.

Multiple Identities in the Field Setting

A second way we fostered a critical feminist pedagogy of paradoxes was by making room for students to actively problematize the intersections between their multiple identities and those of the women they worked with in the field. This is exemplified by the experience of the student Sarit, who volunteered as a financial empowerment trainer. Sarit was matched with a trainee named Rivka, whom she met weekly at a local café. Upon reflection, Sarit realized how this relationship came with a set of clear assumptions. Trust and solidarity were to be built on a shared gender identity while—at the same time—a class-based hierarchy allotted them opposite roles: Sarit was to impart knowledge, confidence, and skills to Rivka, who supposedly needed guidance and empowerment. Yet, in actuality, Rivka seemed less interested in discussing her financial situation than sharing other concerns, and Sarit found that she enjoyed their shared time but often experienced herself as helpless rather than knowledgeable and powerful. Sarit worried about her inadequacy, in light of her supposed failure to meet the expectations of her superiors within the NGO and the academic setting of our program. However, when she shared these concerns with classmates and faculty, rather than censure, she experienced lively and supportive examination of these assumptions. She was encouraged to reframe her leadership role and recognize how the choice structured by the NGO and its neoliberal model of empowerment was not the only one available. Her ambivalence was validated.

Consequently, Sarit began resisting and destabilizing the construction of the relationship: Perhaps the identities of empowerer versus empowered could not be so neatly divided and controlled? The complex dynamics and intimate interactions between the two women in the café, coupled with her critical reflective skills enhanced in the classroom, gave Sarit a new perspective on this relationship and on her own multiple identities. Feeling that she had no valuable capacity with which to lead Rivka effectively up the socioeconomic ladder, Sarit found meaning in their joint movement instead:

I am also a working mother . . . me and her. Women, mothers, workers, not in the same position, but moving together in a glass maze, meeting together.

Thus, multiple identities became multiple paths of identification.¹⁰

Pedagogically, insight into one’s multifaceted identity is gained by relating to and working with others. Sarit’s learning took place within her reciprocal and critical relationships in the classroom and in the activism setting. Applying Fine’s (1998) agenda for critical feminist pedagogy, we too encourage students to “work the hyphens” (p. 135),¹¹ exploring what is happening “in-between”—their own multiple identities and within their various relationships, rejecting dichotomous thinking.

Multiple Methods and Ways of Knowing and of Action

The third pedagogical feature we use is creative integration of multiple, wide-ranging sources from which to garner knowledge. The learning in our seminar drew on academic knowledge, as well as on the students’ practical experience in their sites of activism. Bartunek and Rynes (2014) recently reviewed the paradoxical academic−practitioner relationship. Their review suggests that “academic−practitioner tensions are paradoxical, and thus, how these tensions are managed is important for effective action” (p. 26). Following their line of thought, we held on to the academic-activist tension to enable novel learning to emerge.

More specifically, during the course we engaged in theory, case studies, experienced emotions, embodied experiences, personal reflections, peer critique, and mentoring. This process is multilayered and overlapping, resisting a tendency toward linear learning. Rather than presenting a united front of hierarchical knowledge bestowed on students, the coteaching method in which the course is taught allows us to express different bodies of knowledge, while modeling the management of differences and holding on to tensions between us. Furthermore, the students themselves bring a wide range of variety to the classroom dynamic (e.g., different activism experience and diverse political perspectives). We used this diversity to shatter expectations of an “ideal activist.” The juxtaposition of multiple perspectives and integration of different ways of knowing/acting encouraged participants to explore a variety of understandings, including “outlaw emotions” (Jaggar, 1989), which upset dominant social rules. Likewise, rather than aligning oneself with a singular meaning of one’s leadership role, participants were encouraged to experiment playfully, try on and shed identities and roles, within a relatively safe space (Kark, 2011a)¹² as a means to create a space for their leadership to emerge, develop, take-on form, and change form over time.

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.

Footnotes

Appendix

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our students in the GIFT Program (Bar-Ilan University), who have participated in the Feminist Practicum Course, “From Theory to Practice and Social Action,” in the past ten years, and who have inspired our classes, enriched our knowledge, and contributed to the ideas presented in this paper on paradoxical feminist pedagogy. A special thanks goes out to the students who generously allowed us to use their work and experiences in this paper. We also thank Shulamit Zimmerman-Kalker for her helpful editing and feedback and the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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