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Women leaders struggle with the persistent paradoxical expectations. Literature suggests that a paradox mindset helps to leverage these tensions. This study aims to understand the nexus between the microfoundations of individual women leaders’ experiences, their responses and the organisational context, which enables or hinders their paradox mindset.

This study adopted a qualitative approach by conducting semistructured interviews with 14 women, all senior leaders in corporate South Africa.

The results reveal the interaction in the nexus between, firstly, women leaders’ authenticity and awareness as key anchors that enable them to adopt a paradox mindset and, secondly, the organisation’s role in creating hindrances or opportunities to leverage tensions. Women leaders in our sample applied one of two strategies: they either adapted to the environment or curated a subenvironment. This study shows that, if done authentically, through her own agency, a woman can influence interactions that make it easier to manage tensions within her environment, especially those created by negative performance evaluation because of unconscious institutional gender bias.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the selected research context.

This research contributes to the literature on paradox theory by revealing organisational contextual influencers, such as institutional bias in negative performance evaluation, which hinders a woman leader’s opportunity to be hired or promoted. These organisational influences also interact with women leaders’ ability to embrace paradox and internally leverage agentic and communal tensions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Local Educational Management Units (UGELs), the key government stakeholders in the provision of education services in Peru, implemented responsive interventions. This paper analyses the relationship between UGEL organisational resilience and their responses during this period.

A survey was conducted to measure UGEL management practices, with 251 valid responses from directors and managers. Based on organisational resilience theory, 67 questions were grouped into 13 factors and 3 components: (1) leadership and organisational culture, (2) preparation for change, and (3) networks building on the Organisational Resilience Index (ORI). These factors correlated with the number of interventions and the impact of those interventions implemented by UGELs.

The findings indicated that of all ORI components, leadership and organisational culture ranked the highest. Moreover, the ORI is positively associated with the number of interventions and the perceived impact produced by those interventions. Interestingly, it was found that when the gender variable is included in the correlation between the ORI and the number of interventions, women leading UGELs display a higher number of interventions than their male counterparts; and the coefficient increases even more when women lead a UGEL in a more challenging context (i.e., when the UGEL is located in a low-income area and operates under scarce resources).

This is the first study in Peru which analyses organisational resilience in the education sector, specifically about UGELs during the COVID-19 pandemic. It may help set priorities for institutional strengthening initiatives aimed at improving organisational resilience, which is particularly important in such uncertain and changing contexts.