Key Ideas

• Feminist research seeks to create new knowledge, challenge beliefs and practices that limit human potential, explore the lives of women and other marginalized groups, and facilitate social critique and action to reduce inequities.
• Feminist approaches to research emerged during the 1960s as part of a vibrant period of women's activism and critical questioning in academia.
• Feminist methodologists have offered critiques of traditional approaches to research and have developed innovative approaches to investigate, analyze, and represent the complexity of the social world.
• Feminist researchers argue that all research approaches reflect and strengthen certain agendas and knowledge claims over others and are therefore political by nature.
• There is no one “feminist” methodology; how researchers use methods, conduct research, and embrace certain goals determine whether research is feminist.
• Feminist approaches can be qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods; can use varied theories and strategies; and can address diverse topics. Qualitative inquiry is a common approach feminists use to study the lived experiences of marginalized groups and the forces that limit human potential.
• Feminist research follows general “guiding principles” (Fonow & Cook, 1991, 2005).

Feminist approaches to qualitative research encompass a wide range of theories, practices, and methods used to generate knowledge about the social and physical world; to challenge oppressive forces and beliefs (for example, racism, homophobia, sexism, ethnocentrism); and to spur social change that improves the lives of women and other disadvantaged groups—and, by extension, all human lives. In contrast to traditional research approaches that seek to create knowledge about a given phenomenon, feminist research is concerned with knowledge, critique, and action. Some feminist researchers consider critique a form of action; for others, action might refer to policy changes, program reform, or group empowerment. Feminist research is potentially emancipatory in nature, providing a vehicle to critique common theories and assumptions and to offer voice and visibility to marginalized groups.

The general principles that guide feminist research include a spirit of critique; a challenge to claims of objectivity in research; consciousness of gender as a force that organizes social life and thought; ethical and equitable research practices; and an action orientation focused on personal, institutional, theoretical, and social transformation (Fonow & Cook, 1991, 2005). The questions that drive feminist projects often emerge from women's lived experiences, such as childbearing or sexual harassment, from revisiting common assumptions and practices through the lens of gender, and from considering the perspectives of diverse groups rendered invisible in history and research. Just as feminism, the quest for gender equity, involves diverse groups, beliefs, and practices, feminist research involves diverse researchers, beliefs, and practices. This chapter will describe the historical roots of feminist research, introduce key components of this rich field of inquiry, and provide examples of researchers' use of qualitative methods from a feminist perspective.