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Back to the future: Feminist theory, activism, and doing feminist research in an age of globalization
... Exploring the experiences of student-mothers through this lens provided an opportunity for the research to highlight the forces that create and support inequality for mothers engaging in the blended online learning environment. This aligns with Ackerly and True's (2010) understanding that 'feminism is the search to render visible and to explain patterns of injustice in organisations, behaviour, and normative values that systemically manifest themselves in gender-differentiated ways . . . as in politics, in research, women's voices were often not heard by scientific researchers ' (p. ...
... 464). Feminist theory has been used to support research that explores women's experiences and make recommendations that advocate for recognition and equality (Ackerly & True, 2010;Gokool-Ramdoo, 2005;Julie, 2019;O'Shea, 2015). The data in the current study have been analysed through this lens of feminist equity, exploring the characteristics of the blended online learning experience that may impact mothers disproportionately, affecting their ability to engage in and complete their studies. ...
... For example, Lyonette et al. (2015) found that mothers' choices regarding HE are impacted by childcare arrangements and financial and employment necessities. Such impacts have negatively influenced women's choices for decades (Ackerly & True, 2010). Although some studentmothers in the current study selected blended online learning as they perceived it would enable them to overcome these identified challenges, many mothers reported that this decision came at a personal cost, as outlined in the following theme. ...
In order to realise career and personal goals, as well as financial autonomy and security, many women are pursuing higher education alongside the role of motherhood. Student-mothers face many challenges when engaging in higher education, and many fail to complete their studies. This phenomenological study applies a feminist lens to the choices, motivations and barriers experienced by student-mothers. Data from two focus groups were analysed inductively through a feminist lens to identify emerging themes.The three main themes emerging from the data were: (1) student-mothers’ considerations for engaging in blended online learning; (2) the challenges for student-mothers studying through blended online learning; and (3) self-actualisation through blended online higher education. This research makes an important contribution to the literature by illuminating the study-work-life conflict experienced by student-mothers engaging in blended online learning. The findings of this research have implications for both higher education providers and policy makers. The findings highlight the barriers and facilitators facing mothers’ return to study via blended online learning and provide key insights for addressing these. Future research would benefit from exploring these issues with a larger and more diverse sample considering the perspectives of mothers from different language, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.
... Critical research that aims to create a more just, liveable world (King and Learmonth, 2015) tends to be distant and hesitant in its relationship to practice; operating under specialist language and nuanced theories, it can seem self-referential (Liebert et al., 2011). For example, while feminist scholarship has its roots in political action (Ackerly and True, 2010), engagement and activism are rarely discussed in feminist management research. It is time for critical research to take a 'performative turn' (Spicer et al., 2009) imagining and working for just alternatives. ...
... These civilised men have an automatic right to pass judgement on the marginalised and, through their neutral expertise, create evidence for the disciplines of ruling (Liebert et al., 2011). The positivist method has been used to mask researcher subjectivity (Ackerly and True, 2010) and, crucially for engaged research, the interests of research commissioners. Thus, few policy researchers worry that their client is inherently partisan (Brook and Darlington, 2015). ...
... Siplon (2014) observes that engagement with people suffering injustice can create a tipping point to activism. Feminists are also increasingly recognising that gender struggles have global dimensions and that scholarship and activism must be networked transnationally (Ackerly and True, 2010). Carty and Das Gupta (2009) urge that, rather than international conferencing, we engage in building transnational research teams and grassroot solidarities -a point of reflection for entrepreneurship researchers. ...
Van De Ven’s Engaged Scholarship is becoming institutionalised in the academic profession. His argument that research is radically under-used and more likely to be employed if practitioners engage in shaping research questions and processes is convincing. Nevertheless, Engaged Scholarship has been little critiqued. This article draws on feminist critical realist ontology to compare its philosophy, accountability and transformational potential with a method more familiar to feminism: Activist Scholarship. Engaged Scholarship is found to be underlaboured by a positivist ontology and strong social constructionist epistemology, skewed to the interests of power holders and unlikely to transform underlying social relations. Drawing on Activist Scholarship’s partisan accountability to the marginalised and commitment to collective action, but retaining the possibility of change by engaging power holders, we propose Engaged–Activist Scholarship, a method underlaboured by feminist critical realism, pluralist in its methodology, ambidextrous in its audience and accountable to transforming oppressive contexts.
... Feminist perspectives instead tend to view knowledge production as always situated, partial and fluidall knowledge comes from 'somewhere' (Harding, 2014). Feminist contributions have often questioned how we come to know about the world, particularly through the use of qualitative methods that privilege and centre the experiences of women (Ackerly and True, 2010;Harding, 2014). In doing so, feminists challenged the epistemic injustice (differentially) encountered by women: the silencing and discrediting of women's voices as a source of knowledge, which is in turn implicated in gendered and other oppression (Dotson, 2015). ...
... Feminist scholars working from critical and post-structuralist positions have likewise destabilised and decentralised the masculinist/positivist focus on reason, detachment and objectivity as fundamental to knowledge production, challenging the binary construction of reason/emotion (Ackerly and True, 2010;D'Ignazio and Bhargava, 2020). D' Ignazio and Bhargava (2020: 209) describe the broader project of feminism as 'seeking to situate knowledge in specific human bodies and to "unmask universalism" (Davis, 2008) -to show how things that appear to be neutral or objective are in fact biased towards the bodies that hold power -typically male, white, abled, heterosexual, and well-educated'. ...
In an era of datafication, data visualisation is playing an increasing role in civic meaning-making processes. However, the conventions of data visualisation have been criticised for their reductiveness and rhetoric of neutrality and there have been recent efforts to develop feminist principles for designing data visualisations that are compatible with feminist epistemologies. In this article, we aim to examine how data visualisation is used in feminist activism and by feminist activists. Drawing on the example of digital street harassment activism, we analyse how street harassment is visualised in and through a selection of prominent activist social media accounts. We consider the platform affordances utilised by activists, and how these are harnessed in making street harassment ‘knowable'. Moreover, we critically interrogate which and whose experiences are ‘knowable’ via digital techniques, and what remains obscured and silenced. In analysing digital feminist activists’ practices, we argue that what constitutes ‘data visualisation’ itself must be situated within feminist epistemologies and praxis that centre lived experience as the starting point for knowledge production. Such an approach challenges and disrupts normative constructions of what constitutes data visualisation. Our findings demonstrate how feminist activists are adopting ‘traditional’ practices of speaking out and consciousness-raising to the digital sphere in the creation of a range of visualisations that represent the issue of street harassment. We consider the efficacy of these visualisations for achieving their intended purpose and how they might translate to policy and government responses, if this is indeed their goal. Further, we document a tension between feminist epistemologies and the prevailing logic of datafication or dataism and note how in an attempt to unite the two, some digital feminist activism has contributed to reproducing existing power structures, raising concerning implications at the policy level.
... When conducting interviews for public health research about sexual health in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Melanesia more broadly, it has been our practice to match the gender of the research participant with the researcher [1][2][3][4][5]. This gendered approach is consistent with many cultural practices and obligations in Melanesia and is also informed by feminist and decolonising research theory which explains research as a power-laded process [6][7][8]. We understand that having power means being able to influence the behavior of individuals or groups [9]. ...
... Co-interviewing has been described as a method to bridge cultural and gendered divides [7,23]. However, in sexual health research the interviewer explores highly sensitive topics such as relationships, sexual experiences and sexually transmitted infections. ...
Background:
The social and cultural positions of both researchers and research participants influence qualitative methods and study findings. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), as in other contexts, gender is a key organising characteristic and needs to be central to the design and conduct of research. The colonial history between researcher and participant is also critical to understanding potential power differences. This is particularly relevant to public health research, much of which has emerged from a positivist paradigm. This paper describes our critical reflection of flexible researcher responses enacted during qualitative research in PNG.
Methods:
Led by a senior male HIV researcher from PNG, a male from a PNG university and a female from an Australian university conducted qualitative interviews about faith-based responses to HIV in PNG. The two researchers planned to conduct one-on-one interviews matching gender of participants and interviewer. However, while conducting the study, four participants explicitly requested to be interviewed by both researchers. This experience led us to critically consider socially and culturally situated ways of understanding semi-structured interviewing for public health research in Melanesia.
Results:
New understandings about public health research include: (i) a challenge to the convention that the researcher holds more power than the research participant, (ii) the importance of audience in Melanesia, (iii) cultural safety can be provided when two people co-interview and (iv) the effect an esteemed leader heading the research may have on people's willingness to participate. Researchers who occupy insider-outsider roles in PNG may provide participants new possibilities to communicate key ideas.
Conclusions:
Our recent experience has taught us public health research methods that are gender sensitive and culturally situated are pivotal to successful research in Melanesia. Qualitative research requires adaptability and reflexivity. Public health research methods must continue to expand to reflect the diverse worldviews of research participants. Researchers need to remain open to new possibilities for learning.
... This point, Ackerly and True (2010) argue, is brought to the fore as we try to operationalize the concept of gender (468). Even when sex differences are identified and linked to empirical trends, the way in which gender works within contexts to produce outcomes will vary because of multiple political, economic, and social forces that affect how gender processes become instantiated (ibid). ...
... A central challenge for research at the nexus of gendered inequalities and poverty is not only to elucidate gendered household inequalities but to further investigate the complex and even contradictory linkages between households, markets, and political arenas (Kabeer 2003).Households may be viewed as sites of cooperative conflict in which masculine privilege may operate to create disparate and cumulative access to resources both in the household in within the wider public domain where individuals with access to masculine privilege may defend and promote their interests and as inequalities in the domestic domain intersect with inequalities in gendered institutions of markets, the state, and communities to make gender inequalities society-wide phenomena(Buvinic, Das Gupta, and Casabonne 2009; Kabeer 2003). Gendered inequalities therefore lead men and women to experience poverty differently and unequally and to become poor through different though inextricably linked processes(Ackerly and True 2010;Benería and Gita Sen 1982; Kabeer 2003; UNDP 2010;World Bank 2012). Existing literature suggests that poverty and gendered inequalities is saliently linked to private spheres(Buvinic, Das Gupta, and Casabonne 2009; Folbre 1984; UNDP 2010;World Bank 2012).Gender inequalities structure the relations of production and reproduction in different societies(Buvinic, Das Gupta, and Casabonne 2009;Peterson 2003). ...
... Notably, as conditions of globalization (understood here as political, sociocultural, and technological changes taking place within the context of linked national economies) necessitate and enable the movement of people, how can (and should) feminist researchers theorize and examine West/Rest [1] or North/South relations amidst the complicated relationship between feminisms and globalization (Desai, 2007)? Given the variety of extant feminist theories and calls for activism available from these theoretically diverse positions (Ackerly and True, 2010) in the context of globalization, what kinds of possibilities are there for theorizing and "writing differently" (Grey and Sinclair, 2006). To this end, I rely on fieldwork findings and experiences to address challenges and complexities related to representation, subalternity, and reflexivity when deploying a postcolonial feminist approach to research. ...
... Returning to my earlier point regarding different feminisms and their extant calls for activism (Ackerly and True, 2010), what are the practical and social implications of postcolonial feminist work? While there are many that can be considered, one approach to activism is to employ research findings to address the various challenges women face in different parts of the world. ...
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.
... Additionally, the second author is an outsider to the specific population of focus in the current study, but her identities as a U.S. citizen and the daughter of an Indian immigrant are laden with power differentials that could impact perceptions of the data focused upon in this study. Utilizing reflexivity as a concept and a process (Dowling, 2006), both authors have taken deliberate measures to be self-aware of our researchers' positionality and its likely impact on our research practice (Parahoo, 2006;Hesse-Biber, 2007;Ackerly and True, 2010). For example, the authors would meet frequently to discuss each transcript and discuss their codes to find convergence and reach consensus. ...
Despite a growing focus on processes to promote gender equity, women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions in the Global South. In the present study we focus on the role of familial experiences in shaping and contesting gender ideologies of Pakistani women in the workplace. We specifically examine the reciprocal ways in which women leaders and their family members shape each other’s gender ideologies regarding the workplace. Data collected and analyzed for this study were semi-structured interviews with eight women in positions of leadership in Lahore, Pakistan, and interviews with one family members of each of the women leaders (thus 16 interviews total). Using thematic narrative analysis, we identified three thematic phases: learning gender expectations, resistance, and familial transformation. These phases reflect the progression of developing, resisting, and influencing individual and familial gender ideologies. We document the manifestation of these phases in three specific domains: education, marriage and motherhood, and the workplace. We then discuss how these findings contribute to understanding the experiences of women leaders and perceptions of their family members regarding women’s role in the workplace. Findings from our research provide novel insights into the ways globalization and capitalism continue to shape the socio-cultural context for women leaders in the Global South.
... Among those who expressed interest, selected young people were invited to participate by email. Rather than achieving a random sample, we aimed to include participants who could provide insight into the lived experiences of diverse sexuality, and who had diverse backgrounds (Ackerly & True, 2010). We adopted a staggered approach to recruitment to ensure there were adequate participants across genders, ages, geographical remoteness, and cultural diversity. ...
Multi-gender attracted (bisexual+) youth experience a high risk for suicide and mental health problems, but little is known about their protective factors.
This study explored the challenges and supporting factors for wellbeing in a sample of diverse bisexual+ young people through semi-structured qualitative interviews. Participants (n = 15) were aged 17–25 years and were multi-gender attracted. The sample included young people who were transgender and gender diverse (TGD), culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), Aboriginal, living in regional areas, and on the asexual spectrum.
This research demonstrated unique challenges and protective factors for bisexual+ wellbeing compared to other sexual minority youth. In particular, the findings highlight the exclusion and stigmatization that many bisexual+ young people face, including from within the LGBTQIA+ community. These experiences were more pronounced for some bisexual+ youth, including TGD or CALD young people. Consequently, bisexual+ youth often had limited social support and a sense of belonging, which can buffer against the impact of marginalization among lesbian and gay youth. Despite these challenges, young people were resilient, empathetic and tolerant of others. Those who had access to supportive environments, visibility, and information on their diversity found these healing.
Wellbeing in bisexual+ youth was impacted by a myriad of intersecting aspects of identity and experience, highlighting the importance of intersectional approaches in understanding minority experiences. The findings underscore the need for targeted and intersectional services for sexually diverse youth to address the wellbeing needs of this diverse group.
... The main goal of the movement was to challenge the cultural politics at play in the private sphere leading to oppression and gendered practices (Imam et al., 2018) and to gain an insight from personal experiences and private thoughts of women. It was asserted that the individual problems of women, like social problems, are political in nature because they stem from 'structural disadvantage in patriarchal societies' (Schuster, 2017) and therefore require political solutions (Ackerly & True, 2010). ...
This paper presents a conceptual review of the domain literature encompassing feminism and women's representation and invisibility in the discourse of politics. Tracing and interpreting the current third wave fundamentally require an overview of the three feminist movements since 1830 until today. For this purpose, the study reviewed theses and research articles published between 2010 2020 and examined how feminist movements are conceptualized and manifested in women's representation in the medi participation over time, but also highlights their marginalization in media workforce leading to their invisibility in the discourse of politics. It was found that the third-wave feminism despite its focus on ind effort has failed to uplift women's image in various contexts as reflected in their symbolic annihilation and framing in the media. Women's objectification in advertisements has been widely debated. However, their marginalizat workforce and political discourse needs to be considered and highlighted if the third-wave feminist ideals are to be fully achieved. The study adds to the developing literature on women's journey since the first wave until today with reference to their representation in the media. Abstract This paper presents a conceptual review of the domain literature encompassing feminism and women's representation and invisibility in the discourse of politics. Tracing and interpreting the current third wave fundamentally require an the three feminist movements since 1830 until today. For this purpose, the study reviewed theses and research articles published between 2010 2020 and examined how feminist movements are conceptualized and manifested in women's representation in the media. The article points at women's increasing participation over time,
... The current study follows critical studies which indicate that the real challenge in conceptualizing conflict lies in analyzing these phenomena, while exposing power relations within the patriarchal structure (Enloe, 2000;Charmé, 2005;Ackerly and True, 2010). Moreover, critical and feminist security studies indicate that conflict cannot be fully comprehended unless they are studied through the prism of how people experience them in a myriad way. ...
Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about women’s rights and religious feminism. The context for analysis of women’s experiences is the “Women of the Wall” who have been struggling for the past 30 years for their right to practice their spiritual rituals (praying at the Western Wall) in a hegemonic and masculine arena. We suggest that the “Women of the Wall” and their battle for spiritual equality threaten the hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, this feminist battle expands the feminist revolution and the fights for women’s equality to the religious arena which is dominated by hegemonic masculinity. The implementation of the Listening Guide, a feminist methodology, assists us in uncovering various voices, representing different aspects of the experiences of the “Women of the Wall” in a conflict zone. These narratives reveal juxtapositions of feelings of competence, determination and vulnerability and shed light on the women’s struggle for gender equality in a hegemonic masculine domain.
... Moreover from this approach, the methods aim to gather data that is co-created in the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee [31]. A principle of feminist methods as described by Ackerely and True [33] is to do research 'of value to women and that could result in actions that are beneficial to women.' This was the overall ambition of the study. ...
Background:
In the last thirty years there has been a rise in harmful alcohol use amongst White British women. Approaches to alcohol harm reduction typically position drinking as an individual behaviour, with an emphasis on people to make changes to and by themselves. Moving away from an individual approach, this paper works with a relational framework to develop understanding of non-dependent women's drinking in the context of their everyday lives. It draws on Feminist Ethics of Care theory, to consider the importance of care in women's lives and alcohol as an element of their 'practices of care' in different relationships.
Methods:
The study adopted an interpretive approach and drew on feminist principles of practice. Qualitative one-to-one face-to-face interviews were undertaken with twenty-six White women living in the North East of England. Participants were aged between 24 and 67 years. Thematic analysis of the data was carried out.
Results:
Participants' relationships came through the analysis as central to understanding the way alcohol did and not feature in care practices. In couple relationships drinking offered a way of doing 'care' together, yet when it was used too often it no longer became appropriate as a form of care. In non-family relationships alcohol enabled care giving and receiving, while disguising that care was being received. In relationships with mothers the use of alcohol was relatively absent in the care practices described. Participants' relationship to alcohol as a form of care of self, particularly when drinking alone, was closely related to their roles and responsibilities to others.
Conclusions:
Overall the data suggests that interventions targeting women's drinking should start from a position that women are relational. Moreover that when care by others is lacking or unavailable, alcohol can increasingly be introduced into care practices, and the reproduction of these practices may be leading to an increase in heavy drinking. By seeing alcohol use in the context of wider familial and non-familial relationships, this work has important implications for future interventions.
... GAD scholarship is concerned with analysis of the gendered division of labour, access to and control over resources, and the way in which gender shapes social position of different people [17]. The practical focus of GAD has included analysis and focus on women's different interests (including practical and welfare interests, and strategic interests and empowerment) [18], and the emergence of the Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN) network of global South feminists, with a focus on the process of women's empowerment and traditions of community organising [19,20] A GAD approach considers both the productive and reproductive roles of women (involving home and care work which is generally unremunerated), with an agenda of transforming the structural and social constitution of unequal gender relations [15,16]. ...
There is increasing sensitivity to the importance of gender in energy poverty literature, although there remains relatively scant analysis of energy and gender from feminist development scholars. The purpose of this article is to contribute to addressing this gap. Its aims are two-fold; firstly, it provides a brief introduction to feminist development literature, and its relevance to the field of energy poverty. Secondly, the article presents the findings of a gendered or feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of energy poverty scholarship. It is argued that, at present, energy poverty discourse in academic literature constructs problematic ‘gender myths’ of women, gender equality and its relationship with energy. In doing so, the discourse instrumentalises women and gender for particular energy interventions, and does so at the expense of gender equality outcomes. As such, it highlights the need for greater attention by energy scholars, policy-makers and practitioners to feminist literature and concepts in both research and practice, and the continued inclusion of feminist scholars in interdisciplinary energy research teams.
... The importance of intersectionality for feminist activism has also been in the focus of several authors (e.g. Ackerly & True, 2010;Lenz & Paetau, 2009), often with a specific interest on the development of solidarity that unites diverse political actors. Cole (2008), for example, explained how the concept of intersectionality can be used to understand alliances between feminist activist groups who share political interests but are divided by power-imbalances. ...
Using qualitative data from interviews with young New Zealand feminists, this article shows that these women incorporate their understandings of intersectionality theory into their feminist ideology and strive for overcoming challenges of women's diversity and relative privilege within their feminist practices. However, mismatching strategies of inclusivity and exclusivity among majority and minority groups of feminists hinder their success of cooperation. Such failure creates anxieties among feminists – particularly among those belonging to relatively privileged groups – who feel they do not live up to “intersectional expectations”. This article argues that increasing individualization of young feminists' identities, ideologies and practices is, partly, a result of such difficulties to deal with women's diversity because it is used as a strategy that focuses on the individual rather than on the collective.
... According to them, by beginning with social practices as in speech and action of a person, "we are able to reconstruct identities they construct, as well as the structures and norms they draw on (Winker & Degele, 2011, p. 57)." This is akin to discourse and frame analysis described by Ackerly and True (2010) which involves examining identity constructions in discourse denoting the 'self' and 'other' as distinct from 'master frames' or the boundaries that define how policy issues are understood. ...
This article examines the political contestations over sexual and reproductive rights reform in the Philippines from an intersectional perspective. Specifically, it considers the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill which was enacted in 2012 to unpack the various competing interests and identities of coalitions that are mobilised by sexual and reproductive freedom in the Philippines. It demonstrates how the distinct reform agenda contained in the RH Bill is a direct outcome of the power differentials between and within coalitions. This suggests that the bill serves to benefit some at the expense of others based on how different actors are situated within the intersections of class, gender, sexuality, religion and nation. Data for this research comes from the triangulation of various sources including semi-structured interviews, the RH bill text, and official government and non-government publications. The case of the RH Bill in the Philippines highlights the interdependence between the recognition of sexual and reproductive freedom as a human right and the redistribution of power and resources in society.
... Feminist researchers have explored the daily-lived realities of women and the social inequalities that occur where gender intersects with societal values and political institutions (Ackerly and True, 2010;De Valt, 1996;Weber, 2007). Feminist research methods are rooted in a wide variety of epistemological and methodological approaches which emphasize the voice of women while identifying the power structures that have until now silenced them (Doucet and Mauthner, 2006;Faulkner et al., 2009;Fonow and Cook, 2005). ...
Methodological debates concerning feminist research design tend to focus more on the process of data collection than on the process of data representation. Nevertheless, data representation is fraught with difficulties, especially in communicating research findings concerning vulnerable populations to diverse individuals and groups. How do feminist social work researchers represent the voice of the research participants to community and service organizations while simultaneously meeting the expectations of the academic or political institutions soliciting the research? In this article, we discuss how we approached this dilemma with data collected through a research study on immigrant women experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. Guided by feminist methodological principles, we drew on the tenets of critical realist theory, integrating this analysis with poetic inquiry to reconstruct the women's voices in the representations of research data. We discuss these modalities and provide two case examples to illustrate their application.
... Feminist research is conducted against a critical analysis of the impact of women's oppression, a radical critique of the politics of (male) domination and a history of activism (Ackerley and True, 2010). It has a particular ethical bias oriented toward compassion and an ethic of care (Preissle, 2007). ...
This paper discusses three feminist research principles through three doctoral studies and their accompanying supervision and support group: (i) capturing women’s experience; (ii) improving women’s lives; and (iii) equalising power. These guiding principles assisted in understanding the connections between feminist theory and the respective studies on: older people experiencing family estrangement (Kylie); a mentoring program with women from disadvantaged backgrounds (Jennifer); and (iii) arts-based intervention research to raise awareness of domestic violence in a disadvantaged community (Leanne). It discusses the way in which these guiding principles informed the studies and the supervision process from the students’ and supervisor’s perspective.
... Although the existence of uniquely feminist methods remains an open question in the literature , we support Kaufman's articulation of the significance methodology (read here as the theory and philosophy of knowledge and the research process) holds for feminist research in general and feminist social work research in particular. We understand feminism as " the search to render visible and to explain patterns of injustice in organizations, behavior, and normative values that systemically manifest themselves in gender-differentiated ways " (Ackerly & True, 2010 , p. 464, italics in original). Social work and feminisms have developed together historically , at least in the United States, and have common perspectives focused on the empowerment of women, antidiscriminatory and antioppressive work, and recognition of the pervasiveness of violence that affects women's lives. ...
Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching critical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession.
... Feminist research seeks to illustrate and explore the diversity of women's experiences (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2007), thereby opening up broad opportunities for the sharing of knowledge, learning, and experience, and for greater awareness of the impact of social hierarchies and the influence of these in the oppression of women (Ackerley & True, 2010). An outcome for feminist research is to bring about change for women in the ways they understand in their everyday lives (Gringeri et al., 2010;Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2007). ...
This article reports on the ways in which feminism has led to and influenced the unfolding of our three separate doctoral research journeys. In writing about this choice, we suggest that the epistemology of feminism is compatible with qualitative methods, as well as with the social work discipline, within which we all practice. The article reports on the impact of feminism on this journey from the perspective of three different stages of doctoral research, beginning, middle, and ending.
Throughout the 1990s, women’s Islamic headcover (hijab or headscarf) has been subject to restrictions in public offices, leading to faith and gender discrimination in Turkey. In the last two decades, the visibility of Islam in politics and the public sphere has increased, leading to the resolution of the “headscarf ban” in 2013. Since then, discussions about veiling have moved from the official sphere to the cultural sphere. In recent years, there has been a growing tendency among a new generation of conservative women to problematise veiling. In this regard, this article analyses the digital activism of “You Won't Walk Alone,” which was founded in July 2018 as a platform aiming to give visibility to women who experience forced veiling. Through a thematic analysis of ten different testimonies, this article argues that the activism transforms the cultural meaning of veiling and challenges hegemonic religious body politics by facilitating feminist witnessing.
Women’s Empowerment and Microcredit Programs in India examines the value of microcredit-based self-help groups (SHGs) for women in India and provides an alternative model for women’s empowerment programming.
The microcredit sector continues to boom globally - with private investors, governments and multilateral financial institutions all investing substantial amounts in self-help group programming. Nowhere is this more evident than in India, where the industry has further been deregulated in recent years. Much of the rationale for increased investment in microcredit is based on the idea that it improves ‘women’s empowerment’. But is this true? Researchers have fiercely debated the value of microcredit programs for women, with some arguing that it is exploitative, and others contending that it is empowering. This book provides new insights into women’s empowerment and microcredit programming, elaborating on the themes of power, dignity, mobility and solidarity. It takes a nuanced view of the complexities surrounding self-help group programming and women’s empowerment and argues that the model of microcredit self-help group programming is key to whether it helps or harms women.
By focusing on the experiences and voices of microcredit self-help group members in West Bengal, India, this book elaborates on the idea of microcredit models existing on a continuum, from ‘smart economics’ to more holistic feminist versions of programming.
This chapter is structured around the issue of gender research and what it means to conduct research with a gender perspective. Thus, it discusses research methodologies inspired by feminist ontological and epistemological approaches. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, situated knowledge, feminist poststructuralism and intersectionality, the chapter shows how feminist scholars, especially feminist legal scholars, have adopted feminist epistemologies in challenging gender inequalities in law and society. The chapter draws on legal methods combined with feminist social theories that have assisted feminist scholars to go about legal reforms. Furthermore, focusing on qualitative methods, the chapter explains some of the methods of data collection and data analysis in gender research which have been applied interdisciplinarily across social science and humanities studies. The last part of the chapter concentrates on practical knowledge about conducting gender research that is informed with feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Finally, through some exercises, the students are given the opportunity to design and outline a gender research plan with a socio-legal approach.
This thesis examines the interactions of land exclusions with livelihood transitions, and subsequent gendered responses in both material and emotional forms. It uses a theoretical framework that includes powers of exclusion, livelihood transitions, adaptation and resistance and emotional political ecology to argue that there are many ways to understand the relationships between power and practice in the escalating process of land grabbing. Rather than relying on a universal narrative, this research identifies different configurations of power. The empirical material was generated from the author's long-standing research relationship with the Bunong people in Srae Preah commune, Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia. The study employs a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative household surveys over time, as well as qualitative methods comprising in-depth interviews, life stories, wealth-ranking exercises, and participant observations. Findings show that land exclusions induced by conservation and economic land concessions were evident and enabled by the powers of informality, regulation, the market and force, which limited villagers' customary resource rights. Also, the communal land titling program, which was intended to be inclusive and equitable, resulted in an "intimate exclusion" by community elites. This inequality was exacerbated by capitalist relations that transformed indigenous people's livelihoods into resource commodification leading to market dependency. These transitions resulted in reduced livelihood choices and a greater reliance on the commodity market for household income, although there was still a desire to protect traditional livelihoods. This meant prosperity and impoverishment co-existed, as depicted in the rise in overall income but also in income inequality. Further, gender disparities in access to resources and gendered divisions of labor were evident. Community responses over time included adaptation but also a range of resistance strategies (institutional and non-institutional, direct and indirect, and overt and covert), depending on the reactions of the encroaching actors, their exclusionary powers, local leadership and historical experience. The resistance movements, albeit externally supported and unfederated, yielded some results, although the future of the resources at stake remained uncertain. A variety of both institutional and non-institutional approaches that engaged both men and women were more successful. Importantly, the affective emotions, particularly related to trauma and iii sensationalism, of the local leadership influenced and united villagers in their collective struggles. However, gender differentiation in the application of emotions was not as evident as expected. This study concludes that to understand land exclusions and associated livelihood changes, one needs to understand the nature of "power" over multiple commodifying and territorializing instruments that interact with the practices and discourses of exclusions and their material and non-material impacts. Further, more thorough attention is needed to understand how resources are in a constant state of revalorization; and how different gendered social relations induce both materialist and emotional responses. iv
Feminist scholars working in international development are often challenged to devise inclusive feminist methodologies and produce evidence-based policy recommendations to inform hegemonic policy processes. The quantitative hegemonic policy frames, however, stand in contrast with interpretative feminist approaches. Feminists face a choice between producing purely academic content or acting as mediators and insiders/outsiders in policy arenas. Feminists are thus called to bridge feminist and dominant policy frames and in this way disrupt hegemonic categories of analysis. This article is based on a case study employing two research methods to examine the activism of Indigenous women opposing the Fenix mine operations in Guatemala. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions confirmed practical recommendations directed at traditional decision makers, while photo elicitation interviews reflected structural and cultural frames demonstrating the deeper repercussions of the exploitative and institutionalized practices of the mining industry. Translating local symbols, norms, and cultural practices into the policy frames of decision makers, however, requires deliberate efforts by feminists. This work should not be undermined, neither in terms of the preparation of feminist researchers, nor in light of debates around collective feminist scholarship and collaboration among community-engaged scholars.
Although Brexit campaigns mobilized discourses of hegemonic masculinity that marginalize women, women seemed to be at the forefront of pro‐EU campaigns post‐referendum. I explore to what extent pro‐EU activists make claims to EU citizenship that contest the masculinities of Brexit. Combining Isin's approach to citizenship as ‘performed subject positions’ with intersectional feminist theory, I argue that masculinity became a site of EU citizenship contestation, which nevertheless reproduced racialized and class‐based exclusions. Drawing on interviews with grassroots pro‐EU activists, I argue that activists reject militaristic discourses of British identity by asserting multiple embodied identities, demand rights relating to the intimate sphere, and participate in informal, local and non‐hierarchical ways. Yet, they reveal a white cultural European identity, a European exceptionalism in demands for rights, and a failure to break with the whiteness of traditional social movements. These findings demonstrate the need for feminist and intersectional analysis within EU public opinion research.
El modelo económico hegemónico, centrado en la creciente incorporación de mujeres al espacio público-productivo y la paulatina retirada de los hombres del mismo, se constituye en punto de partida conceptual desde el cual se observan formas concretas de desigualdad en las relaciones sociales de género, en este caso, prácticas de violencia exacerbada como el feminicidio. Mediante la revisión de noticias en diarios locales del estado de Puebla, México, durante los años 2018y 2019, de manera reflexiva planteamos que sectores económicos de población con inserción precaria al mercado laboral, dan cuenta de la ubicación del fenómeno feminicida en ese espacio sociopolítico;asimismo,enfatizamos que en los medios de comunicación digital se manifiestan representaciones estereotipadas de género que sitúan el escenario feminicida como espectáculo morboso que, al paso del tiempo deriva en la pérdida de su atractivo y de la atención pública, sin que por ello disminuyan los casos letales de feminicidio.
De que maneiras adolescentes que presenciam suas mães como vítimas da violência doméstica perpetrada por aqueles que representam a figura paterna, compreendem os papeis de gênero, relacionamentos e violências em seu cotidiano? É a partir deste questionamento que o presente estudo foi construído. Trata-se de um recorte de uma dissertação de mestrado, elaborada através das teorias feministas, realizada com adolescentes do gênero feminino. As experiências de violência transpassam o (complexo) funcionamento das relações familiares. As adolescentes constroem suas ideias e conceitos de “ser mulher” e “ser homem” na contemporaneidade, assim como conceitos de relacionamento e violência, a partir relações conjugais próximas às suas convivências.
Maternal health has become a top global priority. In contrast to the decline of the maternal subject (Stephens, 2011), and despite previous evidence that maternal health has struggled to find a place on the global policy agenda (Shiffman and Smith, 2007), it is now clear that the promotion of health for mothers and children is a staple of both government and private donor commitments. On humanitarian grounds, it makes sense to focus on maternal health and survival in the Global South. Death related to pregnancy or childbirth is a disheartening example of needless suffering. But beyond the initial impulse to reduce suffering, what motivates and/or requires action for addressing injustice in the form of distributional inequities for maternal and reproductive health? In this article, I make a case for the necessity and validity of transnational cooperation to address maternal mortality and morbidity in the Global South. The first component of my argument addresses the transnational elements of both global interconnectedness and responsibility to act. These elements are drawn from Iris Marion Young’s philosophical justification for North-South responsibility-taking. The second component of my argument adds the concept of affective solidarity to that of transnational responsibility. My argument in this section draws from Iris Marion Young’s earlier work on identity (Young, 1990) and embodiment (Young, 1984) and expands the analysis of affective solidarity as a form of both embodiment and political commitment in order to explain the mechanism for transnational connection and understanding. And the final component of my argument explains how both of these elements – transnational responsibility and affective solidarity – support a theory of transnational maternal feminism.
In this article I consider the relationship between socially engaged scholarship and political science. I argue that political science as a discipline is fundamentally committed to social engagement. This leads not to new insights, but back to its more philosophical roots as well as to the foundation and legacy of feminist political inquiry. This theoretical discussion provides important context for the experiential account of my own research. During the period 2009–2013, I established research partnerships with Non-Governmental Organizations and communities in Canada, the US, and Honduras, to investigate the politics of reproduction from the standpoints of individual women in the Global North and South. The socially engaged research in each of these sites produced very different results, yet all point to the same conclusion: Engagement across borders is critical to advancing the projects of global gender justice and human rights, and serves to “bear witness” to experiences of human suffering and the potential for social transformation.
Studies have shown that gender norms and gender relations restrict the innovation capacity of women in aquatic agricultural systems. This chapter explores the converse question: in what ways do and can aquatic agricultural innovation programs, including new and improved practices, technologies and economic opportunities, affect gender norms? Much literature has revealed that the inclusion of women has advanced their economic situation, especially through increasing income. There is limited evidence, however, if or how such economic improvements benefit gender norms and narrow the existing gender inequalities. In this chapter, we explored this question by analyzing qualitative data collected in six villages in the Southwest of Bangladesh. We found that innovations in the CGIAR Research Program on aquatic agricultural systems (CRP-AAS) included both men and women on an equal basis, increased women’s income and contributed to improved local social acceptability and recognition of women as financial providers. Yet it became apparent that such a program did not lead to gender-transformative change, as it did not address all of its three inseparable aspects, i.e., agency, relations and structures. Especially underlying gender norms were not questioned but largely accommodated to. By using the adapted gender-integration continuum framework, we came to the conclusion that a gender-accommodating approach can bring change in certain aspects of agency and relationships, but substantial sustainable gender-transformative change calls for a purposeful gender-transformative approach beyond accommodating to the existing gender norms.
A growing number of states including Canada, Norway and Sweden have adopted gender and feminist-informed approaches to their foreign and security policies. The overarching aim of this article is to advance a theoretical framework that can enable a thoroughgoing study of these developments. Through a feminist lens, we theorise feminist foreign policy arguing that it is, to all intents and purposes, ethical and argue that existing studies of ethical foreign policy and international conduct are by and large gender-blind. We draw upon feminist international relations (IR) theory and the ethics of care to theorise feminist foreign policy and to advance an ethical framework that builds on a relational ontology, which embraces the stories and lived experiences of women and other marginalised groups at the receiving end of foreign policy conduct. By way of conclusion, the article highlights the novel features of the emergent framework and investigates in what ways it might be useful for future analyses of feminist foreign policy. Moreover, we discuss its potential to generate new forms of theoretical insight, empirical knowledge and policy relevance for the refinement of feminist foreign policy practice.
This article highlights the influence of emotions, affective experiences, and rumors on the construction of knowledge within research on conflict and in international politics, as well as within the research process itself. Drawing from fieldwork undertaken in a conflict zone in Myanmar, it suggests that academic knowledge production practices are informed both by the (violent) context in which research is undertaken and by the demands of the discipline to produce a scientifically accepted piece of research. It proposes that attention to emotions may facilitate strong objectivity (Harding 1992) by foregrounding the relationship between research participants, researchers, and the broader research (institutional and immediate) contexts. It introduces the term "rumors-as-affect" as a means to discuss how affective atmospheres or events in the research environments inform research. Three interview situations are presented, in which different emotional reactions are highlighted, focusing on "confusion and guilt"; "seduction"; and finally, "failure and ignorance." These events illustrate how, in recognizing the role emotions and affective atmospheres play in research on conflict and in international politics (cf. Crawford 2014; Hutchison and Bleiker 2014; Ross 2013), researchers may begin to do justice to our representations of what is encountered in the field and how knowledge is constructed within the discipline.
Cet article explore l’aspect genré de la spécialisation disciplinaire et professionnelle en Relations internationales et la façon dont se reproduisent les perceptions des compétences et du savoir. Il se base sur une analyse de discours des participantes ayant assisté à l’atelier canadien de l’organisation Women in International Security ( Wiis -Canada) en 2015, ainsi que sur mes propres expériences en tant qu’organisatrice de cet évènement. L’un des thèmes principaux auquel les participantes ont réfléchi est celui de la voix professionnelle : qui l’acquiert, comment elle est encouragée ou entravée et ce qui arrive quand elle est réduite au silence. Tandis que les jeunes chercheurs tentent de concilier leurs approches académiques et leur identité universitaire naissante, une transition professionnelle s’effectue. Sans un dialogue inclusif sur ces modèles de recherche et les méthodes critiques, les progrès ontologiques et épistémologiques qui se réalisent lors d’évènements tels que l’atelier Wiis -Canada pourraient s’avérer superficiels.
This chapter responds to recent calls for the interdisciplinary study of women and education. Specifically, it examines the liberatory power of informal education through religion and religion’s reproduction of gendered relations. It utilizes an interdisciplinary approach based on former sociological research to examine the complexity of interactions among both social structural environments and woman’s ability to move within, between and among these environments for women in Turkey.
This chapter demonstrates the need to study social inequalities in relation to environmental stresses and change, using methods that bring our attention to injustices that are hidden in plain sight due to social, economic, and political dynamics. Using recent research by a collaboration of physical and social scientists, engineers and ethicists about the human-environment interactions in southwestern Bangladesh, I show that familiarity, frequency, and fragmentation can obscure injustices related to environmental and social change, even from those interested in broad patterns of injustice related to climate change. The methodological commitments, which need to be part of a global, connected research agenda to address environmentally exacerbated social inequalities, are interdisciplinarity, integrated local and global scales, and intersectionality.
Using her experience of living under apartheid and witnessing its downfall and the subsequent creation of new governments in South Africa, the author examines and compares gender inequality in societies undergoing political and economic transformation. By applying this process of legal transformation as a paradigm, the author applies this model to Afghanistan. These two societies serve as counterpoints through which the book engages, in a nuanced and novel way, with the many broader issues that flow from the attempts in newly democratic societies to give effect to the promise of gender equality. Developing the idea of 'conditional interdependence', the book suggests a new approach based on the communitarian values which underpin newly democratic societies and would allow women's rights to gain momentum and reap greater benefits. Broad in its thematic approach, the book generates challenging and complex questions about the achievement of gender equality. It will be of interest to academics interested in gender and human rights, international and comparative law.
Unlike academic and policy discussions over enduring and pervasive social problems like poverty or ill health, which focus on how they should be tackled, debates concerning individuals in prostitution are divided over how, and to what extent, prostitution even is a problem. This has led to apparently intractable disagreement over the legitimate representation of a subject at the juncture between vulnerable invisibility and liberated agency. Concretely, this raises a paradox whereby feminist researchers, seeking to facilitate emancipation through the illumination of the experiences of a stigmatised and invisible subject, must carefully give voice to the voiceless without speaking on their behalf. Drawing on contemporary feminist scholarship on prostitution, this essay argues that, to begin resolving this paradox, the field must explicitly engage with the underlying epistemological and methodological implications of conducting emancipatory social science research on prostitution. The essay concludes that, in order to contribute meaningfully to the feminist research agenda on prostitution, practitioners must acknowledge the inherently political nature of emancipation, as the expression of choice and power.
The global family begins at conception. Every person born into this world enters into a global society in which beliefs and ideas about the meaning of life and its purpose are shared, regardless of one's country of origin or the demographic characteristics of one's birth parents. Ultimately, we are related to one another. Our genetics do not differ significantly; there is no gene for race. If the global family begins at conception, then how might the meaning of a 'global family' cause us to rethink our antiquated ideas about conception, marriage, and parenting, particularly for heterosexual women who choose to remain single? Feminist theory has not devoted substantial scholarship to intentionally unmarried heterosexual women who choose not to conceive children. The same societies that reify the marriage-and-parenting perspective simultaneously neglect the perspectives of heterosexual women who break from the norm. What does a more inclusive form of feminist theory look like? As a new form of feminist theory and appropriately called 'inclusive feminist theory,' this form of feminist theory addresses singlehood for heterosexual women, particularly those who choose not to become pregnant or to parent children. Inclusive feminist theory supports changes to the negative perceptions about unmarried heterosexual women. Next, inclusive feminist theory encourages the choices made by intentionally unmarried heterosexual women with regard to personal and professional development, the definitions of family and friendship, as well as whether to parent children (e.g., through adoption). Inclusive feminist theory is global in scope and provides for women everywhere to live as intentionally unmarried individuals who are not defined by the standard of being married (with or without children). Finally, inclusive feminist theory speaks to the resilience required by heterosexual women to remain intentionally unmarried within societies that reify the norm for heterosexual women as being married.
Synopsis
In many regions, the past decade has been characterised by significant transformations of models of organisation and evaluation of academic work. These include processes of extensification, elasticisation and casualisation of academic labour, and the institutionalisation of regimes of “performativity” (Ball, 2003), enacted by apparatuses of measurement and auditing (Burrows, 2012). These interacting trends are having significant impacts not only on academic working conditions, but also on opportunities for sociopolitical intervention outside the academy. This article draws on an ethnography of Portuguese academia, and on debates about the “toxic” (Gill, 2010) and “careless” (Lynch, 2010) nature of contemporary academic cultures, to analyse the current (im)possibilities of articulating activism and academic work. I argue that in the present day “academia without walls” (Gill, 2010) this articulation is extremely difficult, but we must reject conceptualising that difficulty as an individual challenge, and reframe it as a structural problem requiring – urgently – collective responses.
This thesis documents the first Australian research to interview women about their experiences of domestic violence after catastrophic disaster. As such research is rare in developed countries, it addresses a gap in the disaster literature. Interviews with 30 women in two shires in Victoria confirmed that domestic violence increased following the Black Saturday bushfires on 7th February, 2009. The scant research that exists internationally indicates that not only is the notion of ‘women and children first’ a myth, but that women are disproportionally affected by disasters primarily as a result of their poverty relative to men and prescribed gender roles. This research found that women experiencing increased male violence were silenced in preference of supporting suffering men – men who had been heroes in the fires or were traumatised or unemployed as a result of the disaster. The silencing was evident in the lack of statistics on domestic violence in the aftermath of Black Saturday, the neglect of this issue in recovery and reconstruction operations, and the responses to women’s reports of violence against them by legal, community and health professionals. Three broad explanations for increased domestic violence after Black Saturday are identified – drawn from empirical findings from the field and the research literature. Theoretical concepts from two disparate fields – sacrifice and male privilege – help to explain a key finding that women’s right to live free from violence is conditional. Indeed, the aftermath of Black Saturday presents Australians with the opportunity to see how deeply embedded misogyny is and how fragile our attempts to criminalise domestic violence and hold violent men accountable for their actions. The post-disaster period – characterised as it is by men in uniforms on the ground working, saving, rescuing and restoring; powerful imagery about the role of wives and mothers; increased violence by men; mandatory care-loads for women; and the suffering of good men – presents fertile ground for the fortification of male hegemony. Yet, post-disaster change does not have to be regressive, reinstating and reinforcing the traditional inequitable structure – a structure that has high costs for men and women. An emergency management response to disaster that has embedded gender equity at all levels, together with education of communities on the contribution of strict gender roles to suffering in disaster’s aftermath, could exemplify and hasten a more equal society where men’s violence against women is rare.
Self-stigmatizing women who avoid seeking treatment for depression could believe that they have pragmatic personal reasons for their decision. As a preliminary step towards testing this hypothesis, the aim of this study was to assess diverse, low-income working women for shared self-stigmatizing beliefs about depression.
Depression and depression self-stigma were assessed in a targeted sample of African American, Caucasian and Latina women who qualify for public health services and have access to health care services.
Depression and self-stigmatizing beliefs about depression were positively correlated (r = .30-.64). Over one third of the women in the study (37.5%) said they would do what they could to keep their depression secret. Over half (55%) indicated that the person they normally would disclose depression to is their best friend. A majority (80%) of the women in the study said they would choose not to disclose personal depression to a health care professional. Pairwise t tests for group differences showed that Caucasian women, women recently seen by a health care professional and women with more years of education had higher self-stigma scores.
Self-stigmatizing women who feel depressed could knowingly decide to keep their depression secret with the hope of avoiding loss.
For many years, feminists throughout the world looked to the United States for the most advanced theory and practice. Today,
however, US feminism finds itself at an impasse, stymied by the hostile, post-9/11 political climate. Unsure how to pursue
gender justice under current condition’s, we are now returning the favor, by looking to feminists elsewhere for inspiration
and guidance. Today, accordingly, the cutting edge of gender struggle has shifted away from the United States, to transnational
spaces, such as „Europe“, where the room for maneuver is greater. The consequence is a major shift in the geography of feminist
energies.
Guiding students step-by-step through the research process while simultaneously introducing a range of debates, challenges and tools that feminist scholars use, the second edition of this popular textbook provides a vital resource to those students and researchers approaching their studies from a feminist perspective. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book covers everything from research design, analysis and presentation, to formulating research questions, data collection and publishing research. Offering the most comprehensive and practical guide to the subject available, the text is now also fully updated to take account of recent developments in the field, including participatory action research, new technologies and methods for working with big data and social media.
Doing Feminist Research is required reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses taking a feminist approach to social science methodology, research design and methods. It is the ideal guide for all students and scholars carrying out feminist research, whether in the fields of international relations, political science, interdisciplinary international and global studies, development studies or gender and women's studies.
New to this Edition:
- New discussions of contemporary research methods, including participatory action research, survey research and technology, and methods for big data and social media.
- Updated to reflect recent developments in feminist and gender theory, with references to the latest research examples and new boxes considering recent shifts in the social and political sciences.
- Brand new boxed examples throughout covering topics including collaborations, femicide, negotiating changing research environments and the pros and cons of feminist participatory action research.
- The text is now written in the first (authors) and second (readers) person making the text clearer, more consistent and inclusive from the reader point of view.
The new sociology of sexuality has a two-fold aim: to demonstrate how the social shapes the sexual; and to analyse how the sexual in turn becomes a focal point for personal identity, cultural anxiety value debates and political action. Drawing on papers from the 1994 British Sociological Association annual conference on 'Sexualities in Social Context', this volume brings together key contributors to this stimulating new approach. Topics covered include theoretical developments, the relationship between history and contemporary controversies, community and identity, especially in the context of AIDS, value conflicts and changes in the meanings of intimacy. The book as a whole offers a significant intervention into debates on sexuality, and a thoughtful contribution to the broadening of the sociological agenda.
An account of feminist thought in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.
This chapter explores the methodological implications of putting otherwise marginalized research subjects at the center of IR inquiry. Centering the marginalized subject - namely the survivors of gender-based violence during and after the Independence War of Bangladesh - requires asking ethical and substantive questions that impact not only the research design but, more fundamentally, the research question itself. I began my methodological journey by asking questions about a gendered silence - the rape of of women during this war - and ended up exploring the story of nation-building. The subjects of my study were written out of that history, but that history was drafted on and with their bodies and families. Placing their stories as the focal point of my study, I demonstrate that centering the marginalized yields otherwise inaccessible theoretical insights to the question of nation-building, a central theme in mainstream IR. IR, with its primary interest in state power, is now increasingly paying attention to normative frameworks of analysis. In addition, violence in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti demonstrated that an unresolved past has the power to ferociously destabilize the present. A new generation of IR scholars is gradually daring to pursue unconventional projects that bring in people's voices and deploy them within the boundaries of the discipline. This is what feminist IR scholars, working on areas that have been traditionally overlooked by IR, such as gender, race, and class, have been doing for years.
We are women, poor, indigenous; we are … triply discriminated against. ‘Onelia’ The [Civil Patrols] always threaten the women. [They ask,] “Why don't you have husbands, where do you get these bad ideas?” [Once] the chief of the patrols said: “Now we are going to put all the patrollers together and all the widows together … These women need husbands, because now they are not doing anything, that is why they are organizing … take two or three for each of you”… Several days ago [someone told me] that they raped four women. ‘Carmen’ My consciousness was born [after fleeing from the army and hiding in the jungle]. It is not correct when they tell us today that we are not worth anything, that we don't have any participation in the society, in the development of Guatemala … The same situation that I have experienced since I was a child up until today has made me have this consciousness to rise up as women to guard our heritage, to guard our sacrifices … Always the female elders said that … when the Spanish came here to Guatemala, when they came to invade, our grandparents … were tortured, burned alive. All the books where they had their scriptures were burned … In this sense I understood … the situation that they talked about when I had to live it. So, I came to appreciate the elders because it is they who know more of the culture, how we have been for 500 years … For me it is painful that we have not [only] been suffering for ten, fifteen years, but we have resisted for 500 years. ‘Andrea’
Feminist approaches entered the discipline of International Relations (IR) at the end of the 1980s, about the same time as the “third debate,” or the beginning of what has been called a “postpositivist era” (Lapid 1989). Postpositivism, which includes a variety of approaches such as critical theory, historical sociology and postmodernism, challenged the social scientific methodologies that had dominated the discipline, particularly in the United States. Most IR feminists situate themselves on the postpositivist side of the third debate. Seeing theory as constitutive of reality and conscious of how ideas help shape the world, many IR feminists, together with scholars in other critical approaches, have challenged the social scientific foundations of the field. Most IR feminist empirical research, which took off in the mid-1990s, has not followed the social scientific path-formulating hypotheses and providing evidence that can be used to test, falsify, or validate them. With some exceptions, IR feminists have employed a variety of methods, most of which would fall within postpositivist methodological frameworks.In this chapter, I undertake three tasks related to IR feminists' methodological preferences with particular emphasis on the state and its security seeking practices. I choose to focus on the state because it is the central unit of analysis in IR, and on security because it is an issue at the core of the discipline. I suggest how these methodological preferences differ from conventional social scientific frameworks.
A pair of £120 Russell and Bromley leopard-print kitten heels dominated newspaper coverage of the 2002 Conservative Party Annual Conference. They belonged to Theresa May MP, the Tory Party Chairman. The day after her speech, one third of the Daily Telegraph's front page was filled by a photograph of May's shoes. The accompanying headline read: 'A stiletto in the Tories' Heart'. The offending knife in her statement: 'you know what people call us - the nasty party'.
This book gives a detailed political analysis of nationbuilding processes and how these are closely linked to statebuilding and to issues of war crime, gender and sexuality, and marginalization of minority groups.
Cet article presente une etude menee en Floride a propos des prejuges sexistes a l'encontre des femmes au sein de l'institution judiciaire. L'A. se penche ici sur les croyances des juges et avocats, et s'interroge sur l'impact de la prise de conscience des femmes juges et avocates de leur condition feminine concernant les decisions relatives aux affaires de harcelement, viol et divorce
The author, who is concerned with the methodological implications of critical theory, explores issues in the developing area of emancipatory research. She defines the concept of "research as praxis," examines it in the context of social science research, and discusses examples of empirical research designed to advance emancipatory knowledge. The primary objective of this essay is to help researchers involve the researched in a democratized process of inquiry characterized by negotiation, reciprocity, empowerment — research as praxis.
This paper examines the difficulties and dilemmas faced by a ‘black’ re‐searcher when she attempts to carry out re‐search on a ‘black’ community. What difference does ‘race’ make to the re‐search process? The paper argues, the difficulties and dilemmas experienced by ‘black’ women re‐searchers may be very different to those experienced by white women re‐searchers. Issues of ‘race’ are apparent and enter into the re‐search itself. The paper questions the ways in which re‐search can be conducted and the specific relationships that exist between the re‐searcher and the re‐searched. ‘Black’ women's visible experience (their skin colour) may affect how the re‐searchers perceive and respond to them. What difference does ‘race’ make to problems of access, the ‘presentation of self,’ and power relations in the re‐search process? The data for the paper is based on re‐search carried out among South Asian women within the household in reference to patriarchy theory and focuses on the intersection of gender and ethnicity. Sixty in‐depth interviews have been carried out with South Asian women living in East London. The paper also questions whether there is a distinct ‘perspective’ that can be identified and called a feminist methodology and explores what the goals of a ‘black’ feminist methodology may involve. How can ‘black’ feminist researchers be included into the study of gender relations, rather than being marginalised or ‘added on?’ The paper argues, ‘black’ women can use their craft to empower ‘black’ women throughout the world, aiming to be sensitive to differences and not deviances.
Women's Words is the first collection of writings devoted exclusively to exploring the theoretical, methodological, and practical problems that arise when women utilize oral history as a tool of feminist scholarship. In thirteen multi-disciplin ary esays, the book takes stock of the implicit presuppositions , contradictions, and prospects of oral history at the hands of feminist scholars.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
The article interrogates transnational feminisms as a concept and as a practice. It frames its analysis using contemporary theories of globalization and the older concept of global sisterhood as a backdrop to the concept of transnational feminism. To assess the practical dimension of transnational feminisms, the analysis focuses on women's rights as a human rights movement and the transnationalization of Latin American feminisms. The article suggests that, although transnational feminisms (particularly feminist postcolonial theories) envision themselves in a new frame and see themselves as committed to intersectional analysis and transversal politics, there are important gaps between the intentions (theory, tactics) and outcomes of their theory and practice.
In this interview, Judith Butler speaks about her most recent work, especially Excitable Speech (Routledge, 1997), in terms of how it represents a continuation of certain themes and how it represents moves into new terrains of debate. In particular, she addresses both possible critiques of her work, expecially around the issue of the possibility of political visions and the attention to speech when theorizing subjectification, and responds to questions around certain related themes such as: just what is the possibility of using the same analytical framework to talk both about racializing and gendering processes? How useful is the concept of melancholia? How are textuality and visuality interconnected?
The feminist goal of challenging inequality requires distinctive methods such as combining social action with research and using participatory approaches. These methods strengthen scientific standards of good evidence and open debate, but they conflict with elitism and careerism in academia and hence are rarely used. Nonhierarchical structures must be created.
Feminist anthropology has been a forerunner in debates about power differentials between those observing and those being observed. This article explores how theoretical interventions made by third-wave feminists have led to revisions of the canon, particularly in the understandings of methodology (fieldwork), subject matter (culture), and ethnographic writing. It also highlights some of the problems of placing gender at the center of experience, over differences based on race, class, or sexual orientation. While some feminists have pointed to the impossibility of an ethical feminist anthropology, others have suggested that interdisciplinary ideas and linkages outside academia can lead to greater participation in public policymaking and social struggles that affect the lives of women being studied.
Over the past two decades, academic feminism has differentiated and fragmented substantially in light of a wide range of new approaches in theory. This overview and assessment of the wide, diverse, and changing field of feminist theory gives particular attention to contestations surrounding the political theorizing of gender, identity, and subjectivity. Three divergent and oppositional perspectives - difference feminism, diversity feminism, and deconstruction feminism - frame current discussions regarding the "construction" of the female subject; the nature of sexual difference; the relation between sex and gender; the intersection of gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.; and the significance of "women" as a political category in feminism. The problem of epistemic identification (locating or dislocating the female subject, analyzing gender difference, politicizing identity) is also a central element in the theorizing of feminist politics, multicultural citizenship, justice, power, and the democratic public sphere. Within this domain, we find equally intense debates among feminist theorists concerning the meaning of feminist citizenship and the politics of recognition, as well as the relations between gender equality and cultural rights, feminism and multiculturalism, democracy and difference. Although the field is far from convergence even on the meaning of feminism itself, we might take its current state as a sign of its vitality and significance within the discourses of contemporary social and political theory.