Researching Women's Lives From A Feminist Perspective

Mary Maynard University of York; June Purvis University of Portsmouth., Mary Maynard, June Purvis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135340414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Women's studies is a rapidly expanding field with a tremendous growth in the number of London courses available. As a result of this there has been increasing debate about the nature of feminist research. Can a specifically feminist methodology be identified? Which research methods are most appropriate in feminist work? What is the difference between a feminist approach and other forms of scholarship.; "Researching Women's Lives" explores these issues by focusing on the dynamics of doing research, rather than engaging in a theoretical discussion about research techniques. Feminists are now involved in exploring a whole range of wider issues concerned with practical, political and ethical matters in undertaking research. In addition to issues such as violence, sexuality, political activity and popular culture, contributors also examine the impact of race, class, sexual orientation and age.

Chapter 1

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Methods, Practice and Epistemology: The Debate about Feminism and Research

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Mary Maynard

The question as to what constitutes feminist social research has been an issue for feminists for over a decade and there is now a considerable literature addressing the topic. It seems to be widely accepted by feminists themselves that there is a distinctively feminist mode of enquiry, although there is by no means agreement on what this might mean or involve. In fact, as Sandra Harding has pointed out, scrutiny of the arguments reveals some confusion in the terms that are central to the debate.¹ Harding usefully makes a distinction between discussions of method, of methodology and of epistemology. Whereas method refers to techniques for gathering research material, methodology provides both theory and analysis of the research process. Epistemology is concerned with providing a philosophical grounding for deciding what kinds of knowledge are possible and how we can ensure that they are both adequate and legitimate. Harding contends that the term ‘method’ is often used to refer to all three of these elements of research. This lack of clarity has impeded feminists in their quest convincingly to set out what is specifically ‘feminist’ about their work.

Despite the fact, however, that feminists have increasingly quoted and endorsed Harding's arguments, defining what feminism means in terms of doing research is still no easy matter. Different claims abound. Indeed, the task is made more difficult since there are disagreements both within each of the components which Harding has identified and between them. In this, of course, feminism is no different from the rest of the social sciences. One particular problem is reconciling the abstract analyses and recommendations made at the epistemological level, where there is burgeoning interest and writing, with the more concrete concerns of method and methodology faced by those carrying out empirical research. It is the concern of this chapter to disentangle and explore some of these issues. First, it will provide a critical overview of those arguments that have been central to feminist interest in method, research practice and epistemology. Secondly, it will consider some of the difficulties raised by this literature. Finally, the chapter will address selected key issues important to feminism if our work is to be taken seriously and be influential.

The Debate about Methods

The idea that feminism has a method of conducting social research which is specific to it has increasingly come under attack.² However, this was certainly a view put forward in the early stages of second wave feminist scholarship and it is one which continues to be espoused.³ These arguments advocated and defended a qualitative approach to understanding women's lives as against quantitative methods of enquiry. The arguments were rooted in a critique of what were perceived to be the dominant modes of doing research which were regarded as inhibiting a sociological understanding of women's experiences. Quantitative research (particularly surveys and questionnaires) was seen to represent a ‘masculinist’ form of knowing, where the emphasis was on the detachment of the researcher and the collection and measurement of ‘objective’ social facts through a (supposedly) value-free form of data collection. By contrast, the use of qualitative methods, which focus more on the subjective experiences and meanings of those being researched, was regarded as more appropriate to the kinds of knowledge that feminists wished to make available, as well as being more in keeping with the politics of doing research as a feminist. Semi-structured or unstructured interviewing has been the research technique most often associated with this stance, although this can, of course, produce both quantitative and qualitative data.

Initially, the feminist critique of quantification drew from the arguments of phenomenological sociologists, which were particularly influential in the early 1970s.⁴ These sociologists claimed that the assumptions as to how actors structure their everyday worlds to be found within most questionnaire or interview schedules produce a falsely concrete body of data, which distort rather than reflect actors' meanings. Similarly, feminists have argued that the production of atomistic ‘facts’ and figures fractures people's lives.⁵ Only one tiny part of experience is abstracted as the focus for attention and this is done in both a static and an atemporal fashion. Often the result of such an approach is a simple matrix of standardized variables which is unable to convey an in-depth understanding of, or feeling for, the people under study. Further, research practices which utilize either pre-coded or pre-closed categories are often of limited use when trying to understand women's lives. This is because they are based on assumptions, often at an unrecognized and common-sense level, that the researcher is already sufficiently familiar with the phenomenon being investigated to be able to specify, in advance, the full range of experiences being studied and how these can be encapsulated, categorized and measured. Sociological research which is based upon such assumptions, it is argued, is neither exploratory nor investigatory. Rather, it assesses the extent, distribution or intensity of something which has been defined in advance of the research undertaken, by the researcher. Feminists have argued that there are aspects to women's lives which cannot be pre-known or pre-defined in such a way.

This position was particularly important at a time when feminist research was in its infancy and when women's lives and experiences were still largely invisible. What was most usefully required then was an approach to research which maximized the ability to explore experience, rather than impose externally defined structures on women's lives. Thus feminists emphasized the importance of listening to, recording and understanding women's own descriptions and accounts.⁶ This strategy enabled researchers to extend knowledge of areas such as schooling and paid work, previously understood mainly from a male perspective. It also facilitated the development of new, woman-oriented fields of research, for example violence towards women, sexuality, childbirth and domesticity. At its heart was the tenet that feminist research must begin with an open-ended exploration of women's experiences, since only from that vantage point is it possible to see how their world is organized and the extent to which it differs from that of men.

With hindsight, however, it can be seen that this approach, which proved so beneficial to feminists in their early work, gradually developed into something of an unproblematized orthodoxy against which the political correctness, or otherwise, of all feminist research could be judged.⁷ It began to be assumed that only qualitative methods, especially the in-depth face-to-face interview, could really count in feminist terms and generate useful knowledge. Despite the fact that a number of feminist commentators did advocate the use of a range of research techniques and several deployed survey material and the statistical analysis of data to very effective critical ends,⁸ the tendency to equate feminist work with a qualitative approach has persisted. One reason for this is the way in which quantification has been identified with the position of positivism, and positivism has become something of a bête noire in the quantitative versus qualitative debate.

Historically, what counts as positivism and its defining characteristics have been contested and have also changed.⁹ The stereotypical view, however, and the one to which many feminists tend to subscribe, has focused on what counts as science. The emphasis here has been on deductivism. This involves the formulation of hypotheses about the world and the development of statements from them which are then tested to assess their validity. The existence of an independent and objective test (as is supposed to occur in laboratory experiments, for example), is crucial. It is this which ensures the facticity and reliability of the knowledge produced because it is uncontam-inated by the subjective bias of the researcher. Science is thus characterized in terms of the objectivity of its method and the value-neutrality of the scientist. In textbook notions of positivism the resulting findings are fed back into and absorbed by the initial theory. This linear model of how research supposedly proceeds in the natural sciences is one which, some have argued, the social sciences need to pursue if they are to match the achievements of the other sciences.

The first point to be raised about this picture of positivism is, does it correspond to how science actually works? Developments in the sociology of knowledge and in the philosophy and sociology of science suggest otherwise and, although there are differing positions in the ensuing debate, plausible claims for the socially constructed nature of and investigator involvement in all research have been made.¹⁰

A second issue is to do with the implied relationship between the philosophical doctrine of positivism and empirical methods of research which involve measurement to provide numerical or statistically manipulatable data. In his very clear exposition of the nature of quantitative research Alan Bryman, for example, suggests that positivism and the use of quantitative methods are not necessarily the same thing, as is often assumed, and that there are ‘aspects of the general approach of quantitative researchers which are not directly attributable to either positivism or the practices of the natural sciences’.¹¹ Bryman also questions the extent to which the terms qualitative and quantitative actually denote divergent assumptions about the nature and purpose of social research. He concludes that this is little more than an academic convention which took root in the 1960s and which ‘has little to recommend it, either as a description of the research process or as a prescriptive view of how research should be done’.¹²

We also need to ask how far those doing quantitative research agree with the practices and assumptions which are attributed to them and used to criticize their work. Whilst it is no doubt the case that some do regard themselves as neutral researchers producing objective and value-free ‘facts’, others are more circumspect, acknowledging that providing figures involves as much of an act of social construction as any other kind of research. What is at issue, then, is whether positivism is intrinsic to quantitative research, and the answer appears to be that it is not. Catherine Marsh, for instance, has defended survey research against the charge of positivism, although she concedes that most of the textbook discussions do not allow a distinction between the two. Marsh suggests that there have been two kinds of attacks on surveys. One focuses on crude data collection and analysis and involves criticisms of poor research which most would agree with but which are not synonymous with surveys per se. The other focuses on the fact that the subjects of social research are conscious, language-speaking and meaning-creating. But, she argues, ‘this is a problem for any social scientist, from the experimenter to the ethnographer, and is not confined to surveys’.¹³ It is likely, then, that it ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Feminist Perspectives on The Past and Present Advisory Editorial Board
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1 Methods, Practice and Epistemology: The Debate about Feminism and Research
• Chapter 2 Researching Women's Lives or Studying Women's Oppression? Reflections on What Constitutes Feminist Research
• Chapter 3 Practising Feminist Research: The Intersection of Gender and ‘Race’ in the Research Process
• Chapter 4 Situating the Production of Feminist Ethnography
• Chapter 5 Dancing with Denial: Researching Women and Questioning Men
• Chapter 6 Sensuous Sapphires: A Study of the Social Construction of Black Female Sexuality
• Chapter 7 Coming to Conclusions: Power and Interpretation in Researching Young Women's Sexuality
• Chapter 8 The Work of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Women's Work
• Chapter 9 Doing Feminist Women's History: Researching the Lives of Women in the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian England
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index