Feminist Methodology

Feminist Methodology and Feminist Research

Some of the core issues that have influenced the development of feminist methodology include the use and application of specific research approaches; qualitative versus quantitative hierarchies; bias and believ-ability; objectivity and subjectivity; the impact of new approaches in terms of representation (modern and postmodern influences); voice, text, and ethics; and disciplinary versus interdisciplinary and multidiscipli-nary distinctions.

Feminist methodology, like feminist theory, has developed through three stages: (1) the study of sex differences and biological factors to defend or to support differential experience or inequality based on gender; (2) the study of gender as social construction, to understand the production of inequality through socialization within and through social structures and to challenge understandings of gender as an individual experience; and (3) research that locates gender at the center of inquiry for all social systems and representational forms, be they social institutions, cultural practices, or language and linguistic conventions.

One of the first questions that feminist researchers raised regarded the use and application of specific research methods. Sandra Harding makes a compelling argument about methods in her essay, “Is There a Feminist Method?” She argues that methods are simply tools or techniques for collecting information (data or evidence). Examples of methods include surveys, interviews, experiments, text analyses, and observation. Although any one tool in itself is not feminist, what makes the approach to gathering information feminist is one's ontology or epistemology and, thus, one's methodology. When gathering information or evidence for a purpose, an epistemology helps determine what is considered legitimate or authentic knowledge, who can gather information, how it can be obtained, and from whom. One catalyst in the development of feminist methodological approaches was a recognition of the need to enable groups that had traditionally been primarily the object of study by others or excluded from the research process altogether or from participating in their own research. Such methodological commitments guide the application and analysis of research methods.

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