Guiding Principles of Feminist Research

Critiques of positivism prompted feminist scholars to develop alternative paradigms or ways of knowing, different conceptual frameworks to explain phenomena (theories), different rationales and approaches to direct how research should proceed (methodologies), new techniques for gathering data (methods), and innovative forms to disseminate knowledge (representation). Feminist researchers pose varied questions about the social world and mobilize diverse philosophies, theories, methodologies, and methods to gather information and create knowledge.

Across these diverse approaches, feminist researchers generally share a philosophical stance that differs fundamentally from that of positivists: feminists hold that the conduct of research and the knowledge it generates are not—and cannot be—neutral or objective; indeed, such research goals are illusory and counterproductive. All researchers (including those who employ feminist approaches) inevitably absorb the theories, beliefs, and discourses within their social and historical contexts. Researchers' historical context, social location, training, and life experiences shape how they think about the world. Thus, in ways that both complicate and enrich the research process, researchers are inevitably linked to, not outside of and objective toward, the phenomena they study. For many, qualitative research seemed an ideal feminist response to centuries of exploitative and marginalizing research practices. The inclusive in-depth, face-to-face methods provide opportunities to sensitively explore diverse experiences, honor the experience and knowledge of both researcher and participants, and facilitate collaborative relationships.

Despite the affinities between qualitative research and feminist goals, no given framework or technique is inherently feminist. In any research endeavor—whether traditional or critical, quantitative or qualitative—research purpose drives design and methodology. How researchers conceptualize their research and use methods determines whether research is feminist. For example, a research approach used to objectify rather than empower contradicts the principles of feminist methodology. Researchers can conduct survey research, experimental studies, historical research (see Chapter Six), ethnography (see Chapter Seven), or other forms of research from a feminist perspective. Similarly, feminists also use various methods to elicit information. They might conduct interviews, analyze documents, observe interactions, examine photographs, moderate focus groups, distribute surveys, or burrow in archives for traces of women's historical presence.

What distinguishes feminist from conventional research approaches are a general series of guiding principles (Fonow & Cook, 1991, 2005) that overlap and vary in practice and continue to evolve as methodology grows increasingly complex. These principles relate to researchers' purpose, theoretical allegiances, and approach to the conduct of inquiry.

Nonobjectivity of Research Practices

First, various scholars, including feminists, scholars of color, and advocates of indigenous approaches to research, argue that research practice is laden with cultural values and subjective beliefs. All researchers occupy particular social roles that shape their experiences, values, and practices. All research practices reflect the cultural beliefs and systems of thought in which they are produced. This inevitability can both enhance and distort research practice. For example, complex systems of racism, colonialism, and sexism have shaped Western thought and research practice historically (see also Chapters Seven, Fourteen, Fifteen, and Seventeen). As a result, the history of science is riddled with researchers' ethnocentric assumptions about the superiority of Western science and racist and sexist assumptions about the presumed inferiority of women and people of color. Researchers in advantaged social positions measured skulls, tracked menstrual cycles, and scrutinized the bodies of women and people of color in search of the physical locus of their presumed inferiority. They then used scientific findings to justify restrictions on their social roles.

These examples underscore the pressing need to cast critical light on all research practices: whether findings are laudatory or limiting, they have concrete effects on human lives. Accepting beliefs about particular groups' inferiority as fact, using research to justify their exclusion from higher education where they might contribute to the creation of knowledge, and generalizing research findings from one group to another are not objective practices. They are value-laden acts of power based on particular beliefs about, in this case, race and sex and gender that influence the research undertaken and the knowledge generated.

Some feminists suggest that formulating questions and pursuing research from specific social locations can also enhance research pursuits. For example, feminist standpoint theory (Collins, 1990; Harding, 1991, 2004; Hartsock, 1998, 2003) posits that research grounded in the perspectives of those who have been marginalized (women and men of color, gays and lesbians, the impoverished) has potential to offer certain insights and advantages that research grounded in dominant perspectives cannot. Such perspectives, or standpoints, born of particular experiences in socially marginalized locations, can provide a fuller, richer portrait of human experience than researchers working within dominant paradigms have provided historically.

Gender

Second, feminist researchers view gender and its intersections with race, sexuality, (dis)ability, ethnicity, and nationality as factors structuring social life in often unequal ways that merit research scrutiny. From this perspective, such descriptors do not simply refer to whether one is, for example, a male or female, a citizen of a certain nation, or a member of a particular racial group. Rather, the terms refer to socially constructed notions of people and groups that structure research, occupations, families, law, and the intricacies of people's daily lives in a given culture. For example, the category of “intersex” reflects the limits of previously taken-for-granted categories of “male” and “female” to capture the diversity of human biology. Further, whether a shirt buttons on the left or on the right, or where men and women keep their wallets, are not biologically determined; they are gendered social practices that structure men's and women's movement and experience in minute and almost imperceptible ways. Similarly, what is considered a (dis)ability varies in history and context.

On a broader level, the profession of nursing is gendered as feminine not simply because women constitute the majority of nurses today but because many consider the caring and compassionate characteristics of the profession feminine whether men or women display them. As one male nurse phrased it in a feminist qualitative study, nursing has “never really been considered a manly thing to do” (Sayman, 2009, p. 150). Gender thus structures men's and women's occupational choices, the experiences of male nurses, messages about nursing in media and textbooks, and the value society accords the profession. Feminist research enacts a critical stance that casts gendered analytic light on significant processes that influence human lives.

Researcher Reflexivity

Feminist methodology is also characterized by varied expressions of researcher reflexivity. This concept, which is shared with some other qualitative traditions (see, for example, Chapters Seven, Nine, and Fifteen), refers to researchers' intentional reflections on their research practices. The goal of reflexivity is not to reduce bias; such a goal presumes an objective view is attainable. Rather, in a paradigm that holds that the knower is connected to what is known, reflexivity is a tool for researchers to consider how their assumptions, investments, and decisions shape—often in nourishing and productive ways—the research process. Accordingly, researchers analyze their role in creating knowledge as a standard aspect of inquiry. Reflexivity might include researchers' reflection on their epistemologies and methods; how their identities, standpoint, or training shapes inquiry; or potential audience responses to the research.

Consider this reflection from Mendoza-Denton (2008), a cultural anthropologist who has used sociolinguistics, ethnography, and feminist theory to study cultural practice among Latina gangs. She writes,

In this reflection, which is relevant to a variety of critical and feminist projects, Mendoza-Denton notes that damaging racist, sexist, and ethnocentric practices have been commonplace in Western research traditions historically. Such traditions obligate researchers to reflect on and render visible how their standpoints, assumptions, and practices shape their research (see, for example, Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen).

Ethical and Equitable Practices

A fourth aspect of feminist research is vigilance to ethical and equitable research conduct, which can range in practice from ensuring researchers follow federally mandated informed consent protocol (making sure participants understand the procedures to which they are consenting; see also Chapter Two) to involving participants in shaping research design. Feminists work against the legacy of exploiting research subjects and strive to conduct research with people (humanizing stance) rather than on people (objectifying stance). A detached stance runs counter to feminist principles of collaboration and connection, muffles the emotional elements of lived experience, and obscures the human and social dynamics of research.

Like other qualitative approaches, feminist methodologies include such ethical practices as protecting the identities of participants and ensuring research poses no risks or harm beyond that participants might face in their everyday lives. Like other emancipatory approaches (see Chapters Fourteen, Fifteen, and Seventeen), feminist research attends to power inequities in society and in the research process. For example, researchers typically control the direction and outcome of research and often occupy higher social status or possess greater resources than participants. Thus, to minimize power imbalances, feminists might collaborate with participants in research design or data analysis (see Chapter Eighteen). To honor participants' time and energy, researchers might offer gift certificates or assistance with child care. To interrupt researcher authority, they might invite participants to critique their findings.

Like other critical approaches, inquiry conducted from a feminist perspective is also concerned with the politics of representation. This phrase highlights the ethical weight of portraying research subjects and findings that have implications for human lives. Research is used to understand human behavior, to develop theories, and to create policy. Accordingly, researchers must consider how they speak for and with their subjects, how they present their work, and how others might interpret or use their findings. For example, researchers examining the experiences of undocumented workers or women activists who live in regions suffused with ethnic and religious conflict must take extreme care in how they collect, preserve, and represent data from women whose safety could be threatened if identified (Gluck, 1991).

Other implications relate to the power of knowledge claims. For example, early feminist research focused narrowly on gender at the expense of other aspects of lived experience (for example, race, class, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and the intersections among these entities). Its findings captured white, Western, middle-class women's experiences and ignored significant differences among women. Researchers' failure to theorize their own social locations and critique their race-, class-, or heterosexual-based assumptions perpetuated partial and limited knowledge claims and research injustices at odds with researchers' feminist mission. Indeed, scholars of color and postcolonial critics have emphasized that various aspects of women's intersecting identities and social locations (language, class, race, religion, citizenship status) can hold greater significance than sex or gender for shaping women's lives.

Action Orientation

A final guiding principle is an action orientation. Like other critical research approaches, feminist inquiry proceeds from the assumption that research is a political and potentially emancipatory enterprise. The mission is not simply to explore, explain, or predict. Although one might explore a young woman's experience with eating problems or explain the effectiveness of a rape prevention program, the ultimate goal of feminist research is to produce findings that heighten consciousness about injustice, that empower disadvantaged groups, and that transform social institutions, practices, and theories to create a more equitable world. In this view, fundamental social inequities demand the attention of researchers.

Action can take many forms, including critiquing common assumptions, posing alternative views, or developing policies that advance rights. Thus some view critique and theorizing as forms of action. Some research is explicitly action research (the purpose of which is to contribute to change in a particular setting; see also Chapter Twelve), whereas some research provides information that others can use to better human lives.

To reflect these principles, feminist researchers have developed innovative forms to portray their research findings. For example, some have found academic conventions inadequate for capturing nuances in lived experience and the complexity of the social world. Standardized reports that require clinical language and tidy formatting can constrain what researchers convey. Some suggest they can also dehumanize participants. Researchers have used poetry (Richardson, 1997) and drama (Visweswaran, 1994) as alternatives to capture emotion simmering in qualitative data and to challenge positivist norms; combined participant voices to convey the collaborative nature of meaning-making; and created messy multivocal texts (texts with multiple writers, images, and styles) to challenge easy readings. These forms, which Lather (1991) calls “empowering research designs,” challenge traditional ideas of what science can look like.