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1 – 10 of over 8000Feminist 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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Lyndsay M.C. Hayhurst, Holly Thorpe and Megan Chawansky
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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The purpose of this paper is to critique the argument that research methodology is gendered and present a post‐essentialist understanding of research methods.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critique the argument that research methodology is gendered and present a post‐essentialist understanding of research methods.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual paper which engages with the feminist debate over the gendering of methodology.
Findings
The paper begins by discussing the feminist critique of positivism that quantitative methodologies embody patriarchal assumptions. Then, drawing on contemporary attempts by feminists to rehabilitate quantitative research, and developments in organizational research methods, it counters the argument that methodologies are gendered. Specifically, it argues the idea that methods embody gendered assumptions is founded on essentialist reasoning and treats them as having immutable characteristics. Moving on, the paper offers a post‐essentialist understanding of “methods as text”. Key advantages of this metaphor are that it acknowledges the interpretative flexibility of research methods and illustrates the rhetorical function descriptions of them perform in particular contexts. Finally, the contributions and limitations of this perspective and its implications for future research are summarised.
Research limitations/implications
Further research is needed to understand how research methods are discursively constructed and the rhetorical functions descriptions of them perform in specific contexts.
Originality/value
The paper critiques the view that research methodology is gendered and offers a novel metaphor for understanding research methods. It is likely to be of most value to social scientists with an interest in research methods and/or feminist epistemologies.
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This chapter will explore how different feminist theories and theorists have informed what counts as research, what is defined as a research issue, and methodological approaches…
Abstract
This chapter will explore how different feminist theories and theorists have informed what counts as research, what is defined as a research issue, and methodological approaches to research in higher education. It will consider the theoretical and methodological tools feminist academics have mobilized in order to develop more powerful explanations of how gender and other forms of difference work in the relation to the positioning of the individual, higher education and the nation state within globalized economies. It pays particular regard to the feminist political project of social justice.
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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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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This chapter analyzes the critical move in feminist scholarship to gender the discourse on risk mediation in dangerous ethnographic fieldwork, particularly in social justice…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter analyzes the critical move in feminist scholarship to gender the discourse on risk mediation in dangerous ethnographic fieldwork, particularly in social justice research. Additionally, I draw on a reflexive analysis of my own fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico, to examine the intersectional impact of social location (gender, race, class, etc.) on risk management.
Methodology/approach
I synthesize key literature contributions in social science and feminist scholarship on doing dangerous fieldwork. Ethnographic data includes three months of participant observation and interviews with participants of the 2006 Oaxacan uprising.
Findings
I argue that the following themes represent axes of gendered risk mediation in social justice fieldwork: (1) the intersectional impact of social location on varied risks and the mediation of those risks, (2) impression management as an important tool for risk mediation, and (3) ethical dilemmas within risk mediation. The key dangers and risks in fieldwork include physical danger, emotional/psychological impacts, risk to research participants, ethical dangers, separation from family through international work, risk of imprisonment, and academic/professional risk.
Research limitations/implications
Analysis of personal experience in the field is limited to this one researcher’s experience; however, it mirrors key themes present in the literature. Reflexive analysis of social location on risk mediation is part of a continued call by feminist ethnographers to research practical risk mediation techniques and recognize the intersectional impacts of social location on fieldwork.
Practical implications
This chapter provides insights that instructors of ethnographic methods might use to discuss dangerous fieldsites and how to mediate risk.
Social implications
A failure to recognize risk in ethnographic research may disproportionately impact researchers most susceptible to particular risks.
Originality/value
Although feminist scholarship has long examined social location in fieldwork, analysis of risk management is limited. Additionally, this chapter adds to this scholarship by contributing key themes that unite the available research and a list of most-often discussed risks in fieldwork.
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In the United States, rights-based laws have opened major social institutions to previously marginalized groups, altering the terrain on which social movements act, creating…
Abstract
In the United States, rights-based laws have opened major social institutions to previously marginalized groups, altering the terrain on which social movements act, creating opportunities for disruption, and expanding the forms protest takes. This research is an attempt to add to our understanding of contemporary protest. I use data from 50 open-ended, loosely structured interviews with women feminist PhD sociologists working at U.S. (and 1 Canadian) colleges and universities as a lens through which to examine contemporary protest. These in-depth interviews reveal that the demand-making and discursive protest of feminists in academia is rooted in the empowering intersections of their collective feminist identities and disrupts hegemonic practices in the academy and beyond. My findings indicate that social movement theory must move beyond restrictive notions of potential movement targets, activist locations, and strategies; and past narrow conceptualizations of collective action and movement goals.
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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