Narratives of workplace resistance: Reframing Saudi women in leadership

Abstract

Despite considerable social, economic, and organizational advancements that Saudi women have achieved in the past two decades, research on Saudi women in leadership continues to focus on the structural, organizational, and societal challenges the women face. Often missing from analyses are the micro ways in which the women resist and negotiate with/against organizational challenges. Using a postcolonial feminist lens, we asked: how do Saudi women leaders resist power in the workplace? This question was posed to reinsert the value of Saudi women within organizational narratives, generate deeper understanding of a marginalized group of women, and understand resistance as located within socio-political-ethical structures. Our contributions are threefold: (1) this study advances the literature on Saudi women in organizations by focusing on resistance as a point of entry and analysis; (2) we add a less antagonistic relationship between power/resistance, and reconceptualize agency/resistance as one inclusive of subtle and individual forms of resistance, and one that moves beyond the limits of the liberal imaginary; (3) our study also adds to the burgeoning scholarship on workplace resistance in non-Western contexts, which advocates for situated knowledge and the decolonization of management.