Imagining Black Womanhood: The Negotiation of Power and Identity within the Girls Empowerment Project

4. GEP’s Organizational Structure and Power Matrix

4 GEP’s Organizational Structure and Power Matrix Organizational structure delineates how power is formally structured to move within an organization (Tayeb 1988). Hall (1987) suggests that “organizational structure is analogous to the structure of a building; just as walls, floors, and ceilings influence and constrain our interactions so too does organizational structure” (56). Specifically, it serves to define the organizational hierarchy and make clear decision-making processes and procedures. Yet organizational structure can and does change. Similar to organizational culture , it “evolves as a consequence of the activities that take place within it” (Hall 1987, 56). Given the role of organizational structure in shaping power dynamics, it has been a hotly debated topic within feminist circles. Most early discussions of women’s organizing and organizations either articulated what was wrong with bureaucracy or argued the fundamental incompatibility between bureaucracy and feminism (Kornegger 1975; Browne 1976; Rothschild 1976; Ferguson 1984).1 Recently, scholars have found that women have created hybrid organizations that blend characteristics from collective and bureaucratic forms.2 Bordt (1997), for example, found that 75 percent of women’s nonprofit organizations in New York were a hybrid form. Furthermore, she noted that organizations composed of, or working with, minority (oppressed) populations tended to adopt a hybrid form. Sudbury (1998) also found hybrid structures within Black women’s organizations . In particular, she noted that Black women’s organizations shared “an 77 organic commitment to the creation of empowering structures and avoidance of top-down decision making,” which did not necessarily evolve into “overtly feminist models of organizing” (133). Rather, within these spaces, “the ideals of empowerment and equality coexisted comfortably alongside the need for leadership” (133). In other words, within Black women’s organizations, empowerment was not equated with collectivism, and hierarchy was not equated with oppression. Instead, she suggests the following: Black women are in fact tuning into a far more nuanced understanding of power, a discourse which recognizes its “two faces.” Rather than rejecting all over manifestations of power, they attempt to balance the need to oppose abuses of power with the desire to enable women to experience control and authority. (Sudbury 1998, 135) It seems that Black women incorporate both hierarchical and collective strategies into their organizing and organizations to create opportunities for women to share power collectively, as well as to be in positions of authority and thus to learn how to use power in a liberating and transformative fashion. In this chapter, I explore GEP’s organizational structure and power matrix. I suggest that GEP founders created a hybrid organization structured along both bureaucratic and collective ideals. Its bureaucratic or hierarchical tendencies reflected the discourse of control found within its organizational environment, while the discourse of empowerment promoted more collectivist tendencies toward consensus building and power-sharing practices. These contradictory impulses created an ambiguous power structure within GEP that was most clearly manifested in the organization’s decision-making practices. Most of the time, empowerment took precedence over control within GEP. For example, as noted in the previous chapter, the discourse of empowerment opened up a space for GEP women to revise the organization’s mission and shift the organization from a teen pregnancy prevention program to a youth development organization grounded in an Africentric womanist context. Yet empowerment also took the form of resisting organizational authority . For example, GEP women drew upon the discourse of sisterhood to challenge organizational policies and power relationships. GEP girls, drawing upon the youth development discourse and their status as consumers, spoke up, spoke out, walked in, and walked out within the context of GEP. This hybrid structure, in conjunction with GEP’s environment and culture, combined to create an organizational power matrix that opened up space for both women and girls to “do power.” It became a social space that interrupted and oftentimes altered the terrain of power and voice that the staff and partici78 IMAGINING BLACK WOMANHOOD pants experienced in their daily lives. This organizational power matrix served as the springboard for the participants’ identity work. GEP’S FORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE GEP was a five-tiered organization. Similar to other bureaucratic service organizations, GEP had a formal hierarchical structure with highly specified written rules and formal social controls. The job positions within the organization were not temporary or rotating but permanent placements with job descriptions. While staff configurations within GEP have varied over time, these variations did not significantly alter the organization’s underlying...