Strategies of Feminist Research in a Globalized World

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter will discuss strategies of feminist research that can best be applied to globalized gender studies.

Approach – These strategies work with the premise that women and men are not homogeneous categories that can be used for simple comparisons. They are divided by national allegiances, social class statuses, and racial ethnic identities as well as by gender. Individuals have more than one status, and these statuses intersect and impact on each other. When some or all of these statuses are in disadvantaged groups, the result of this intersectionality of disadvantaged statuses is complex inequality. Feminist scholarship has to be able to work with multiple categories and multiple identities in examining the causes of and remedies for complex inequality.

The concept of gender in intersectional research alludes to a social status equivalent to other advantaged and disadvantaged social statuses. I contrast the premises of gender feminism and woman's feminism to show the development of the concept of gender as social structural, rather than just individual, interactive, and relational.

Findings – Useful strategies in the new directions in feminist research that are intersectional and global are the following: using more than one set of opposites, recognizing subjects’ multiple identities and status dilemmas, analyzing the effects of intersectionality on complex inequality, and being aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the researcher's standpoint.

Value – The value of these strategies of multidimensional feminist research is to develop new sources of knowledge and new approaches for effective transnational feminist political activism.

Citation

Lorber, J. (2011), "Strategies of Feminist Research in a Globalized World", Ngan-Ling Chow, E., Texler Segal, M. and Tan, L. (Ed.) Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and Multiple Inequalities: Global, Transnational and Local Contexts (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-2126(2011)0000015007