Systemic risks of workplace resilience culture: How neoliberal productivity myths fuel burnout and inequality
Original framing: “'Double-edged' nature of workplace resilience examined” — Phys.org
Marginalized workers—especially Black, Indigenous, disabled, and migrant women—are disproportionately expected to perform resilience while facing systemic barriers. Their narratives reveal resilience as survival under duress, not a choice. For example, domestic workers in the Global South often develop resilience strategies that are invisible to Western psychology but central to their communities' survival.
The 'double-edged' narrative of workplace resilience is a symptom of neoliberalism’s extraction of human labor under the guise of empowerment.
Historically, resilience has been a tool of oppression—from colonial forced labor to Silicon Valley’s 'hustle culture'—yet it persists because it externalizes costs onto workers while benefiting employers and shareholders. Marginalized communities, who have long practiced communal resilience, are now being gaslit into believing their survival tactics are personal failures. The solution lies not in abandoning resilience but in redefining it: from a corporate buzzword to a collective, ecological, and decolonial practice. This requires dismantling the productivity myth, centering those most harmed by current systems, and reclaiming resilience as a right—not a requirement for exploitation. The trickster’s laughter reminds us that the absurdity isn’t in resilience itself, but in a world that demands it while refusing to address its causes.