Resilience, grit, perseverance, hardiness: what they mean for our Voices Fellowship programme

When the Quote This Woman+ team sat down to plan the training curriculum for the 2024/25 Voices Fellowship, we had a detailed list the topics we’d cover.

Personal branding, social media, interview skills, public speaking, understanding the media landscape – all of these were in the mix. They were topics we knew would be important to the group of women+ activists and change-makers we were recruiting for a six-month programme funded by CFLI – the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.

But because one of the the overall aims of the programme is confidence-building, we also knew that emotional, social and cultural issues had to be addressed. If feminist advocacy is to succeed, it has to reckon with a wide variety of challenges.

So we knew we’d need at some point to focus on overcoming the obstacles and barriers that face people who are moving from the margins to the spotlight. From social media backlash to community disapproval, and from imposter syndrome to geographical location – we knew support would be needed.

To that end, we had a draft training module called something like ”Overcoming challenges: Resilience” (it was very draft at that point.)

But we were stopped in our tracks by Rene Sparks, programme manager at the time, who said: “Wait, there’s some thinking to do around the concept of resilience; it’s seen as problematic in many ways.”

So we went and did some research, and it was as she said. There’s a lot to unpack in that one word.

What is resilience?

Resilience, as the dictionary defines it, is the ability to successfully adapt to difficult or challenging life experiences. The term is used to cover both how we adapt, and the positive outcomes of our coping strategies. It involves having the mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility to adjust to both internal and external demands.

Why is the concept of resilience problematic?

The key critique is not so much levelled at the word or what it means, but rather at the way in which it is often used: to place the burden of overcoming adversity on individuals, while ignoring systemic and societal factors that contribute to their struggles.

That is movingly described in the blog post The problem with resilience, where social work student Lys Eden describes the way in which children in need can be denied an intervention because they are perceived to be “resilient”. Speaking about her own childhood, she writes:

My perceived resiliency became a chronic justification to slap ‘NFA’ [No Further Action] on countless social care referrals throughout my childhood. I will never forget the sentiments uttered by one of my social workers, “You’re 15 now, you’ve only got a year until you can go into a hostel”. Still now, I find this hard to come to terms with; the recognition of how dire my situation was, but an unwillingness to do anything about this under the guise of ‘resilience’ as well as a presumption that I would be able to cope living independently at such a young age.

Similarly, “resilience” often crops up in discussions around poverty, carrying the hidden expectation that people in unjust circumstances will adapt instead of advocating for change.

What to say instead?

Our research brought up a range or concepts:

Resilience – the ability to bounce back after adversity or disappointment; being able to manage and adapt to sources of stress or adversity.
Perseverance – steadfastness and commitment when mastering skills or completing a task; having a commitment to learning.
Grit – the tendency to sustain interest and effort towards long term goals; associated with self-control and deferring short term gratification. (The term is widely understood to have been brought to the fore by Angela Duckworth and is itself subject to critique, because it doesn’t include adaptability).
Hardiness – this encompasses the attitudes that help people face stress: control (believing you can influence your surroundings in useful ways), commitment (staying actively engaged in events rather than becoming passive and isolated) and challenge (viewing change as a normal part of life and an opportunity for growth).

We found a range of literature on all these concepts but time was short. We needed to conceptualise what we thought we’d cover in our training module.

In the end, we knew that we were in the business of offering people practical skills and real-life support – and so we distilled a set of principles we’d use to take in the broad sweep of coping mechanisms:

Developing self-awareness, and understanding your response to stress. This can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, and develop more effective coping strategies.
Building strong social safety nets and support systems. Having people you can rely on during difficult times can provide a sense of security and belonging.
Learning and practicing coping skills for managing stress and difficult emotions. This might include techniques like journaling, mindfulness, exercise, or spending time in nature.
Cultivating a mindset where you believe that you can learn and grow from your experiences. This can help you approach challenges as opportunities for development, rather than as threats.

At the end of February 2025, our module on challenges and obstacles lies ahead of us. As with everything we’ve done in this Fellowship, we are learning and growing and changing as we go along, and it is possible we’ll refine those guidelines yet again.

As an organisation, we’ve found we’ve had to change and adapt at each step of this process. The understanding and support of the CFLI has been one of the pillars that QW+ depends on as we work on our own resilience, grit and hardiness.

Renee Moodie is the 2024/24 Voices Fellowship curriculum designer, as well as all-round trouble-shooter, for QW+, through her private company Safe Hands.