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1 – 10 of over 6000Feminist research acknowledges the centrality of female knowledge and experience. Within this two further strands can be identified: that many feminist researchers place an…
Abstract
Feminist research acknowledges the centrality of female knowledge and experience. Within this two further strands can be identified: that many feminist researchers place an emphasis on the social construction of meaning, with particular emphasis on the role of language as the primary vehicle of such constructions; and that within the centrality of female knowledge and experience is a feminist analysis of the role of power in determining the form and representation of social knowledge. The latter is an acknowledgement that feminist research is not just an extension of traditional research in non‐sexist ways and areas of relevance to women but that it must entail a critical evaluation of the research process in terms of its ability to illuminate women's experiences. This should comprise three strands — a critique of traditional theories and methods, the development of more appropriate theories and methods for studying the experience of women and the analysis of the role of the researcher within his/her research.
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This paper seeks to critique recent research on gender and accounting to explore how feminist methodology can move on and radicalise the gender agenda in the accounting context.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to critique recent research on gender and accounting to explore how feminist methodology can move on and radicalise the gender agenda in the accounting context.
Design/methodology/approach
After examining current research on gender and accounting, the paper explores the nature of feminist methodology and its relation to epistemology. It explores three inter‐related tenets of feminist methodology in detail: power and politics, subjectivity and reflexivity.
Findings
The paper suggests that much research in the accounting is concerned with gender‐as‐a‐variable, rather than being distinctly feminist, thus missing the opportunity to radicalise the agenda. It makes suggestions for how a feminist approach to methodology could be applied to the accounting context.
Originality/value
The paper calls for a wider application of a feminist approach to accounting research and gives suggestions as to where this might be applied.
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Brigid Limerick and Jane O'Leary
To provide examples of qualitative research based on feminist epistemological assumptions. Such research re‐invents rather than recycles management theory, producing alternative…
Abstract
Purpose
To provide examples of qualitative research based on feminist epistemological assumptions. Such research re‐invents rather than recycles management theory, producing alternative understandings which speak to the demands of managing post‐corporate workplaces characterised by growing levels of diversity and rapid discontinuous change.
Design/methodology/approach
Reports on three feminist qualitative research projects. Describes research processes and outcomes which aim to reflexively attend to diverse voices and researcher and research participant subjectivities.
Findings
Provides tangible examples of empirical feminist qualitative research, including discussions of how the research was conducted, the nature of the findings and critical reflections on the extent to which the researchers' feminist epistemological assumptions were enacted.
Research limitations/implications
The three research projects discussed have all been conducted within the Australian education sector. Accordingly, future research could focus on providing practical examples of feminist qualitative research approaches in the management field, in different international and industrial/sector contexts.
Practical implications
Provides management researchers with three examples of feminist qualitative research covering diverse topics including leadership, mentoring and ethics.
Originality/value
While there is a plethora of writing concerned with feminist research generally, there is a dearth of feminist research in the management field specifically. This paper's contribution therefore lies in providing tangible examples of feminist qualitative research in the management field.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of dilemmas that emerge at the theoretical and practical interfaces of ethnographic fieldwork and feminist advocacy. This is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of dilemmas that emerge at the theoretical and practical interfaces of ethnographic fieldwork and feminist advocacy. This is done by examining the researcher’s role in the field and the complex relationships between the researcher and the researched.
Design/methodology/approach
Critical self-reflections and autoethnographic analyses of fieldwork experiences in the author’s home country in South Asia are used to explore these dilemmas.
Findings
Using situated examples from a typical organisational setting involving both the oppressive and the oppressed, the researcher’s participant observation is found to be conflicted between critical participation and critical observation. Conscious and/or unconscious critical participation through enactment of feminist ethics by combining researcher and advocacy roles allows a route to assuage these conflicts. Practical strategies used to accomplish this are also discussed.
Research limitations/implications
Although the practical strategies discussed in this paper are culturally and organisationally specific and hence limited by them, it is hoped that suitable variants will emerge for readers from their discussion. Further research is needed to investigate the variety of ways in which the researcher-advocate positionality proposed in this paper can be strategically adopted conditional on cultural and organisational contexts, feminist research questions, and researchers’ abilities and constraints.
Practical implications
This paper seeks to shed light on the dilemmas of feminist ethics faced by critical feminist researchers conducting ethnographic fieldwork. It also discusses ways to enable researchers to circumvent these dilemmas in both epistemologically productive ways by collecting rich data and in ontologically enriching ways by allowing some enactment of feminist ethics. To this end, a positionality of the feminist researcher-advocate is conceptualised that does not enforce constraints of extreme positionalities of either a conventional ethnographer or an action researcher.
Social implications
Besides illustrating the need to stretch beyond traditional boundaries of participant observation, the researcher-advocate positionality also allows feminist researchers to make small, but directly tangible impact towards gender equality in their field setting. Implications for researchers’ emotional, and cognitive safety are also discussed especially when they identify with one or more minority identities.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to discussions on the theory of methods by highlighting the benefits of enacting feminist ethics as a way of critical participation in research settings.
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Sara J. Wilkinson and Pat Morton
This paper seeks to establish and demonstrate the relevance of feminist research methods within built environment research. While no one definition of feminist research exists…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to establish and demonstrate the relevance of feminist research methods within built environment research. While no one definition of feminist research exists, many feminist researchers identify characteristics which distinguish it from traditional social science research; it is research that studies women, or that focuses on gender.
Design/methodology/approach
There is a growing body of research into women and the built environment adopting feminist paradigms. This paper explains the dynamic, evolving philosophical basis of feminist research methods drawing comparisons to traditional positivist methodologies and demonstrates that feminist research has characteristics that can be imported into other research paradigms.
Findings
The paper shows that there is much to be learned from an understanding of feminist research for all researchers in the built environment and that by adopting different approaches to research, researchers may find new and original ways of examining complex issues.
Research limitations/implications
The implications are that all researchers in the built environment should consider the benefits of adopting a feminist approach in their research especially where the researcher is seeking to gain a deeper understanding of peoples' experiences.
Originality/value
This paper seeks to raise awareness of the benefits of adopting feminist research methods in a discipline dominated by traditional approaches to research.
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This paper aims to offer an account of the research process and reflects on feminist research practice. It discusses methodological issues based on the author's experience as a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer an account of the research process and reflects on feminist research practice. It discusses methodological issues based on the author's experience as a PhD student in sociology carrying out fieldwork with women in Latin America. The paper makes the research process transparent and shows how feminist epistemologies inform the research strategies the author used in the field.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a reflexive piece about the methodology and method used and the dilemmas encountered in the author's empirical work as a feminist doctoral researcher. It considers biographical issues and personal interests in relation to the research.
Findings
The article discusses methodological assumptions and feminist epistemologies. It examines the interview as a research method as well as interviewing skills. It reflects on research practice, considering power issues, feminist challenges in the field, and the topic of reflexivity and otherness.
Originality/value
The article provides an account of feminist research practice, and considers the roles and skills of the researcher when interviewing. It contributes to knowledge by providing real examples of feminist research in Latin America.
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Edicleia Oliveira, Serge Basini and Thomas M. Cooney
This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to the proposed framework.
Design/methodology/approach
The article critically examines the current state of women’s entrepreneurship research regarding the institutional context and highlights the benefits of a shift towards feminist phenomenology.
Findings
The prevailing disembodied and gender-neutral portrayal of entrepreneurship has resulted in an equivocal understanding of women’s entrepreneurship and perpetuated a male-biased discourse within research and practice. By adopting a feminist phenomenological approach, this article argues for the importance of considering the ontological dimensions of lived experiences of situatedness, intersubjectivity, intentionality and temporality in analysing women entrepreneurs’ agency within gendered institutional contexts. It also demonstrates that feminist phenomenology could broaden the current scope of IPA regarding the embodied dimension of language.
Research limitations/implications
The adoption of feminist phenomenology and IPA presents new avenues for research that go beyond the traditional cognitive approach in entrepreneurship, contributing to theory and practice. The proposed conceptual framework also has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research, such as a phenomenological intersectional approach and arts-based methods.
Originality/value
The article contributes to a new research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship research by offering a feminist phenomenological framework that focuses on the embodied dimension of entrepreneurship through the integration of IPA and conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).
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The paper details the construction of a postcolonial feminist approach to ethnography; providing insight into how the researcher developed her ethnographic approach based on her…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper details the construction of a postcolonial feminist approach to ethnography; providing insight into how the researcher developed her ethnographic approach based on her theoretical framework and demonstrating how she undertook this research. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to outline how the researcher identified positionality and representation as the primary challenges of undertaking a postcolonial feminist ethnography with marginalised Maya women in Guatemala, and how she addressed these complexities in the field.
Design/methodology/approach
This postcolonial feminist ethnography was conducted over a three-month period in the rural highlands of Sololá, Guatemala. This approach bridges the intersections of postcolonial, feminist, critical and reflexive research.
Findings
The account presented in this paper offers insight into the theoretical development of a postcolonial feminist ethnography and its implementation in practice. The researcher demonstrates the importance of addressing the issues of positionality and representation to overcome differences in position, privilege and power when building relationships with participants, and to ensure the participants and their knowledge are accurately represented.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the growing interest in postcolonial research and proposes a postcolonial feminist ethnography as an alternative approach for engaging in research with the marginalised Other.
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The purpose of this paper is to outline the challenges and complexities in conducting research faced by scholars utilizing postcolonial feminist frameworks. The paper discusses…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline the challenges and complexities in conducting research faced by scholars utilizing postcolonial feminist frameworks. The paper discusses postcolonial feminist key concepts, namely representation, subalternity, and reflexivity and the challenges scholars face when deploying these concepts in fieldwork settings. The paper then outlines the implications of these concepts for feminist praxis related to international management theory, research, and writing as well as entrepreneurship programs.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper discusses the experiences of the author in conducting fieldwork on Turkish high‐technology entrepreneurs in the USA and Turkey by focusing explicitly on the challenges and complexities postcolonial feminist frameworks bring to ethnography and auto‐ethnography.
Findings
The paper suggests that conducting fieldwork guided by postcolonial feminist frameworks faces challenges related to representation inclusive of the author and the participants in the study. It offers subalternity as a relational understanding of subjects in contrast to comparative approaches to the study of business people. The paper also discusses how positionality impacts reflexivity through gender, ethnicity, and class relations.
Originality/value
This paper offers a critical perspective on conducting research related to non‐Western subjects by addressing issues arising from feminist and postcolonial intersections. It is a valuable contribution to those researchers who are interested in conducting feminist research particularly with non‐Western people and cultures.
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This paper aims to explore the methodological and epistemological assumptions that have foregrounded the author's research into discursive activism in Australian feminist blogs…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the methodological and epistemological assumptions that have foregrounded the author's research into discursive activism in Australian feminist blogs, and a discussion of her research methods and why they were appropriate to this study. In particular, it seeks to discuss internet research methods and approaches toward the study of a feminist network online in order to make a case for methodological approaches that are feminist in themselves and aimed toward discursive change. The author recognises the political and personally affective nature of research.
Design/methodology/approach
The project design and methodology of the study draws on traditions of feminist online ethnography and feminist standpoint methodology, using a combination of face‐to‐face semi‐structured interviews, modified grounded theory, network analysis, and participant observation.
Findings
The author used a community‐curated online “carnival” to minimise problems of researcher navigation, and explore the pitfalls of insider research, and she discusses the success of looking for contradiction as a method of privileging disagreement in research.
Originality/value
The original contribution of this paper is toward the uses of disagreement, contradiction, discursive rupture, and dislocation in modified grounded theory analysis. The theoretical perspectives discussed in this paper are compatible with a view of subjectivity that allows for discursive political agency, and also encourage an ethics of listening and respect for difference that includes considerations of affect, inequality and power relations in the study of online communities.
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