Feminist Methodologies

Feminist methodologies in geography are the research practices through which feminist geography is enacted. Methodology refers to an approach to research, including the practices of research design, data collection strategies, the conduct of research, and modes of analysis. Feminist methodologies are informed by a feminist epistemology or theory of knowledge. Drawing attention to how gender influences what counts as knowledge and how knowledge is produced, feminist methodologies put into practice an epistemological critique of the masculinist underpinnings of scientific positivism. Feminist methodologies have informed feminist geographers' choices of methods, although they have not constrained them. Feminist geographers continue to conduct both quantitative and qualitative research. Finally, feminist methodologies are distinguished by an attention to relations of power within the research process and by a commitment to feminist politics in all its diversity.

Although feminist critiques of positivist empiricist methodological practices were first articulated during the 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that feminist methodological discussions were first published in geography. Feminist methodology arose from a critique of the claims to objectivity and the assumptions of authority in social scientific research. Biases in research methodologies, feminists argued, not only have led to the exclusion of certain voices from the privileged ground of scientific knowledge but also have promoted exploitive research practices. Feminist geographers have shown how the methods historically associated with geographic research, such as exploring, charting, surveying, and mapping, have contributed to imperial practices, colonial ideology, and military conquest.

Feminist methodologies aim to break down the hierarchies of research, to shift the power relations between the researcher and the researched, and to cultivate relational, engaged, and emancipatory research practices. Adopting a stance of “reflexivity” in feminist research means considering how the shifting sociospatial constructs of identity and subjectivity affect relations between researchers and participants and how the inequality embedded in these relations affects the production of knowledge. Feminist geographers work both to destabilize this power relation in the research process and to acknowledge its impact on the practices and products of geographic research. For feminists, objectivity not only is impossible but also is an undesirable goal in that it disavows the intersubjectivity of the research process.

Feminist geographers have debated the question of whether working with a feminist methodology should give rise to a particular set of methods—that is, to particular techniques of data collection and analysis. [Page 161]Critiques of dominant research practices have led some feminists to reject quantitative methods, arguing that these methods are tied to patriarchal structures, both in their claims to objectivity and in their reliance on predetermined inflexible categories. Indeed, the rise of feminist geography has been associated with the resurgence of qualitative methodologies in geography, including interviews, oral histories, focus groups, and ethnographies. Qualitative methods may offer particular strengths for addressing feminist concerns. For example, life histories may enable a researcher to bring forward the voices of those who have been silenced by dominant discourses, discussion (or “focus”) groups may foreground the contextual construction of meaning, and participant observation may enable interactive research in which relationships, friendship, and connection are central to the research process. These methods may also be more conducive to practices of collaboration whereby researchers return the products of their studies to the communities in which they conducted their fieldwork, often soliciting feedback from research participants.

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