15 Tension, Contradiction, and Paradox

(Wood and Conrad 1983)

Difficulties experienced by women in American labor force are studied under:

• societal research: sex-role stereotypes

• organizational perspective: organizational structures that are barriers

• individualistic research: based on personalities and activities that make it difficult for women to be professionals.

Paradox, mystification, and the double-bind

Responses that Perpetuate the Double-binding Pattern

• acceptance

• counter-disqualification

• withdrawal

Double-binds composed of:

• type of relational situation: complementary relationship with unbalanced power structure

• paradox-creating communication: mixed messages

• responses (by person with less power) that solidify the pattern

Mystification: “the symbolic processes whereby one socio-economic group misrepresents action in order to maintain its hegemony over another socio-economic group.”

• mystification is a manifestation of bullying

In Western culture, women’s stereotypical roles:

• sex object,

• pet

• mother

• iron maiden

Professional are thought of as:

• rationality

• power

• decisiveness

• activity

• objectivity

• toughness

Paradoxes in organizations:

• powerlessness

• marginality and minority

  • success can be attributed to ease of task, perseverance, not competence.

  • lone women status

• self-definition

• affirmative action

• training programs

• networks and mentor relationships

Responses to paradox:

• responses that perpetuate the situation

  • acceptance

  • counter-disqualification

  • withdrawal

• responses that redefine the situation

  • interpret in a fresh frame-of-reference

  • redirection

  • confrontation

• responses that transcend the situation

(Angela Trethewey and Ashcraft 2004)

• reframe organizational tension:

  • irrationality (e.g., paradox, contradiction, irony) is normal

  • irrationalities are gendered

  • irrationality is an applied concern

(Way 2019)

• Youth Crew context

• tension between youths and adults in summer camp

• tension is a “‘feeling state,’ specifically the discomfort experienced by organizational members when they encounter organizational practices and structures that are contradictory or paradoxical.” (Putnam, Fairhurst, and Banghart 2016)

• Youth work is just preparatory experience for future work.

• Paradoxes

  • Providing vs. discounting oneself as worker

  • demanding confidence vs. orchestrating uncertainty

  • playing along vs. being playful

Acting to Alter Privilege by Maintaining the Structural-Performative Paradox by Sonja K. Foss

• paradoxical perspectives on privilege—the structural and the performative

• paradoxes of privileges:

  • dispersal-divestment: disperse privilege, but also divest it.

  • alteration-reproduction: when you try to combat prvilidge, it backfires