“I felt sad then, I feel free now”: a case for examining the constructive resistance of opted-out mothers

• Date: 19 September 2023
• Pages: 849-869
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-08-2022-0202
• Published date: 19 September 2023
• Author: Melissa Yoong,Nourhan Mohamed

“I felt sad then, I feel free now”:

a case for examining

the constructive resistance

of opted-out mothers

Melissa Yoong and Nourhan Mohamed

School of English, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Malaysia

Abstract

Purpose –While past research has explored how opting-out enables mothers to break free from masculinist

organizational cultures, less attention has been given to how they resist disciplinary power that constitutes and

governs their subjectivities. This paper aims to add to the discussion of opting-out as a site of power and

resistance by proposing the concept of “constructive resistance”as a productive vantage point for

investigating opted-out mothers’subversive practices of self-making.

Design/methodology/approach –This Malaysian case study brings together the notion of constructive

resistance, critical narrative analysis and APPRAISAL theory to examine the reflective stories of eighteen

mothers who exited formal employment. These accounts were collected through an open-ended questionnaire

and semi-structured email interviews.

Findings –The mothers in the sample tend to construct themselves in two main ways, as (1) valuable mothers

(capable, tireless, caring mothers who are key figures in their children’s lives) and (2) competent professionals.

These subjectivities are parasitic on gendered and neoliberal ideals but allow the mothers to undermine

neoliberal capitalist work arrangements that were incongruent with their personal values and adversely

impacted their well-being, as well as refuse organizational narrativesthat positioned them as “failed”workers.

Originality/value –Whereas power is primarily seen in previous opting-out scholarship as centralized and

constraining, this case study illustrates how the lens of constructive resistance can be beneficial for examining

opted-out mothers’struggles against a less direct form of power that governs through the production of truths

and subjectivities.

Keywords Opt-out stories, Constructive resistance, Critical narrative analysis, Appraisal theory,

Intensive mothering, Neoliberalism

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

This case study examines the resistant discursive self-making of a group of Malaysian

mothers against the organizational challenges underlying their opting out [1] of formal

employment [2]. Opting-out research has been dominated by studies focused on why women

exit. These have identified an array of factors relating to both the family and workplace such

as gendered notions of work and care (Schnurr et al., 2020), limited childcare and flexible work

options (Chevalier and Viitanen, 2002;Stone, 2007) and an unwarranted 24/7 work culture

(Ely and Padavic, 2020). A smaller but no less important strand of opting-out scholarship

engages centrally with questions of agency and emancipation. These studies argue that

women may leave to liberate themselves from corporate values and conditions (Tommasi and

Degen, 2022), regain control of their lives and well-being (Biese and McKie, 2016) and develop

alternative, more sustainable careers that allow for a two-way blurring between work and

Constructive

resistance

of opted-out

mothers

849

The authors would like to thank their research assistants, Shafiqah Alliah binti Razman, Swetha Siva

and Wong Xiu Wei, for their contributions to this study and all the participants for sharing their stories.

The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback and

suggestions. This research was funded by the Women in Southeast Asian Social Sciences (WiSEASS)

Collaborative Grant.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 8 August 2022

Revised 11 March 2023

16 June 2023

Accepted 30 August 2023

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 43 No. 5, 2024

pp. 849-869

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-08-2022-0202

family (Biese and Choroszewicz, 2019). They may see that they are being marginalized in their

workplace because of their gender and elect not to continue putting themselves through that

(Biese, 2017). Their emancipatory acts of agency, nevertheless, are not free of power

(Foucault, 1990) but constrained by norms and structures that may be left undisturbed

(McKie et al., 2013) or even advanced. For example, Tommasi and Degen (2022) show that

those who opt out may posit values based on “true flexibility and autonomy in terms of time,

non-masculinity, work-private life compatibility, human (personal) relationships, and even

flat(ter) hierarchies”. However, they can at the same time accelerate the neoliberal principles

that underpin global corporate culture by “building companies in a market-driven logic that

strives towards economic success, submitting to the idea that hard work might pay off, and

engaging in identification through economic superiority”. This line of research has advanced

our understanding of opting-out as an act of reinvention and (imperfect) opposition to

masculinist and neoliberal capitalist work cultures that are problematic for women, especially

mothers. However, largely missing from analyses are opted-out mothers’resistant discursive

identity work –self-making practices against disciplinary power (Foucault, 1991) which are

dispersed and small-scale (Lilja and Vinthagen, 2018) yet elemental to the resistance within

the opting-out phenomenon since much of neoliberal capitalism’s strength –and its point of

potential weakness –lie in its ability to mediate ways of being and thinking about oneself

around its interests (Mumby et al., 2017).

This paper adds to the discussion of opting-out as a site of power and resistance by

proposing the concept of “constructive resistance”as a productive vantage point for

investigating opted-out mothers’subversive (re)molding of their selves. Constructive

resistance is practices that not only contest oppressive systems but do so by recreating the

self and discourses “otherwise”, counter to dominant norms and values (Lilja and Vinthagen,

2018). While discourses that dictate what is moral and rational are powerful forms of

oppression, we are not entirely dominated by them but are both objects and agents of

discourses as they operate and are (re)constituted through our forms of being, valuing and

acting (Zotzmann and O’Regan, 2016). Examining constructive resistance is important for

understanding what alternative ways of being are put forward in a context of power –

potentially engendering change –and what is kept in play (Lilja, 2021). Bringing in the notion

of constructive resistance when exploring mothers’opting-out narratives provides a lens for

seeing their dissent as productive acts that not just challenge entrenched power but also (re)

construct identities and discourses and sometimes even power through the same action. In

this paper, we take as a case study the discursive transgressive practices performed by

eighteen Malaysian mothers as they narrate and make sense of their opting-out experiences.

As we will show, they produce “slightly differently structured subjectivities”(Lilja and

Vinthagen, 2018, p. 212) which can be read as constructive resistance. While our sample does

not allow us to make generalizations about the dissenting practices of opted-out mothers in

Malaysia, it does enable us to empirically capture and critically discuss self-formation

processes through which this group of middle-class women respond to the issues faced within

organizational and sociocultural contexts.

Bringing together the notion of constructive resistance, critical narrative analysis (Souto-

Manning, 2014a) and APPRAISAL theory (Martin and White, 2005), we examine how the

mothers in our study use evaluative language in their opting-out stories to negotiate and

resist the norms and values that created constraints for them to pursue mainstream careers.

We answer two main questions: (1) What subjectivities do the mothers construct through the

evaluation patterns in their narratives? and (2) How do these subject positions resist,

reformulate or collude with dominant discourses? Before we do so, we introduce the

discursive and socio-economic context within which the mothers’resistance takes place,

followed by the theoretical lenses applied to the narratives. After outlining our data and

methodology, we present the key findings of our analysis. We then discuss the possible

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