Using data on submitted and published manuscripts in Feminist Economics from 1995 to 2019, we examine differences in method and scope used by authors residing in the Global North and Global South. We specifically focus on research methods, intersectional analyses, region of analysis, and co-authorship status. Further, using logistic regression models, we examine the relationship between authors’ location and use of research methods. We find authors in the Global South are more likely to engage in empirical and mixed-methods (...) papers compared to Global North authors in our sample. Moreover, a greater share of Global South authors engage in intersectional analysis and exhibit geographical focus on developing countries. Drawing insights from the Feminist Economics manuscripts data, we argue that encouraging Global South research can contribute to the goals of the field of feminist economics – aimed at inclusivity, diversity of standpoints, and plurality in research methods, thereby improving overall economic research. (shrink)

The ways in which knowledge relates to power have been much discussed in radical education theory. New emphasis on the role of gender and the growing debate about subjectivity have deepened the discussion, while making it more complex. In Getting Smart , Patti Lather makes use of her unique integration of feminism and postmodernism into critical education theory to address some of the most vital questions facing education researchers and teachers.

Conducting feminist research during the global COVID-19 pandemic has evoked a renewed interest in the concept of care within our research team. The purpose of this paper is to provide concrete examples of how feminist ethics of care changed the initial and ongoing design of a community-engaged research project in Ontario, Canada. Drawing from examples and lessons learned, we focus on various adjustments to our methodological decision-making that intentionally honoured and prioritized our responsibilities to community partners, (...) class='Hi'>research participants, broader communities impacted by research, and the research team. By illustrating the methodological and ethical implications of these decisions, we argue that attending to these responsibilities prioritized both feminist research ethics and feminist ethics of care. As a result, we propose moving towards a conceptualization of a feminist research ethics of care, and discuss the value of this concept for researchers studying social justice. (shrink)

In her paper ‘An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology’, Marilyn Strathern argues that feminist research cannot produce a paradigm shift in social anthropology. I reconstruct her arguments and evaluate them, revealing that they are insufficient for ruling out this possibility.

In this paper I discuss how feminist research focusing epistemological issues can be used within computer science. I approach and explore epistemological questions in computer science through a number of themes, which I believe are important to the issues of what knowledge is produced as well as how it is produced and how knowledge is perceived in CS. I discuss for example paradigms and metaphors in computer science, the role of abstractions and the concept of naturalisation. In order to (...) illustrate epistemological views in CS and how these can be questioned from the viewpoints of feminist epistemology, I also do a close reading and commenting of a recent book within the philosophy of computing. (shrink)

The Handbook of Feminist Research Methodologies in Management and Organization Studies focuses on the interlinkages between feminist theories, methodologies and research methods. This ground-breaking Handbook analyses classic feminist theoretical texts and their methodological implications, as well as topical approaches to management and organization studies, including postcolonial feminism, critical race theory and new feminist materialisms. The book discusses what kind of methodological and methods related concerns different theoretical approaches call forth and highlights them through empirical examples. Featuring contributions (...) from leading scholars in the field of management and organization studies, the book examines knowledge production through different theoretical perspectives, including standpoint feminism, feminist post-structuralism, postcolonial feminism, and queer analysis. Providing a critical and analytical lens through which to view traditional research practices, it offers insight into how to tackle ethical and practical issues related to feminist research. This book is a vital resource for graduate and post-graduate students in management and organization as well as gender and management. It also provides feminist scholars a comprehensive overview of the contemporary debates in the field. The book is a key resource for any student and scholar engaged in qualitative methodologies and research methods in management, and organization studies and social sciences in general. (shrink)

This paper will analyse what it takes to conduct feminist and sensitive research in countries that have seen mass human rights violations. Transitional justice research involves critical examination of difficult topics which raises a number of ethical and methodological issues for both the participants and the researchers. Although empirical research has been a facet of the studies produced in the field, researchers’ accounts of undertaking research in often politically sensitive environments is largely missing from published books (...) and research reports. This paper is informed by personal experiences of doing research in wartime rape in the ethnically and politically divided country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I argue that the researcher’s profile and positionality directly affects the fieldwork and that fieldwork is a dialogical process which is structured by the researcher and the wider political processes in the country. (shrink)

This article offers a feminist perspective on public sociology that suggests that the potential risks of going public with feminist sociological research are more pervasive and serious than proponents of public sociologies have previously acknowledged. At the same time, the promise of public sociologies for furthering feminist goals has been largely untapped. Here, the authors recount their own experience with widely publicized research that, while neither unique nor typical, serves to highlight potential risks of making feminist sociological (...) class='Hi'>research public. Feminist scholars must be made aware of these risks as feminist research, which challenges existing gender inequalities and arrangements, is especially likely to encounter negative public reaction. The authors recommend collective and conscientious attention to both the medium and the message. The perspective on public sociologies presented here can help further the goals of public sociology and holds special promise for feminist sociologists who seek effective ways to promote social change. (shrink)

: The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways that values can guide science without violating this standard.

Examining the connections between geontologic and interrelational theories of place counter-mapping practices offers important methodological and pedagogic lessons in environmental sustainability e...

In an article recently published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the legal scholar Helen Reece argues that the prevalence and effects of rape myths have been overstated and the designation of certain beliefs and attitudes as myths is simply wrong. Feminist researchers, she argues, are engaged ‘in a process of creating myths about myths’ in a way that serves to close down and limit productive debate in this ‘vexed’ area. In this article we argue that Reece’s analysis is (...) methodologically flawed, crudely reductionist and rhetorically unyielding. We locate Reece’s analysis within the wider theoretical field to show how her failure to engage with feminist literature on rape other than in the narrowest, most exclusionary terms, yields an approach which impedes rather than advances public understanding and panders to a kind of simplistic thinking which cannot begin to grapple with the complexity of the phenomenon that is rape. We conclude by emphasizing the continuing commitment of feminist researchers carefully to theorize and map the fraught field of progressive legal strategizing in order to identify and counter the kinds of risks and shortcomings of political activism with which Reece is rightly concerned. (shrink)

This paper examines issues of legitimacy surrounding feminist research in psychology, in relation to its current and future impact on the mainstream of the discipline. It argues that its relatively limited impact to date is due, in part, to the nature of feminist psychology, and, in part, to its interaction with the social institutions of psychology as a discipline. Further, the paper contends that the influence of the field may well remain relatively minor, however convincingly its potential benefits are (...) argued, if it fails both to analyse and to utilize the social processes by which legitimacy is conferred. (shrink)

Given the growing popularity of online methods for researchers and the increasing awareness of the levels of harassment and abuse directed at women online—especially women expressing feminist views—it is critical that we address the implications of online abuse for feminist researchers. Focussing on an often hidden yet significant part of our methodological decisions and recruitment, this paper details the online abuse levelled by men's rights activists against a research project on women's experiences of men's stranger intrusions in public space. (...) It argues for the need to locate such experiences within a violence-against-women frame, extending the concept of a continuum of sexual violence. Such an extension renders visible the added labour of ‘safety work’, which forms an invisible backdrop to the methodological decisions of many feminist researchers. (shrink)

This essay presents the interwoven phenomenological reflections of three feminist women, situated across various intersections of difference, whose plans to conduct research on Black feminism and ambiguity were affected by the coronavirus and the social climate resulting from widespread responses to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States during the summer of 2020. The authors offer an experimental, juxtaposed intersubjective phenomenology of research, located in the critical phenomenological framework of intersectional ambiguity. The (...) reflections include reconsiderations of the utility of research and its (inter)subjective dimensions. Each writer captures how differences in their sociopolitical identity and positioning affected their ability to conduct “research” during a summer of unrest and unease. Taken in sum, these reflections argue that critical phenomenology provides many opportunities for reflecting upon lived experience and the relevance of intellectual labor and knowledge-production to the sociopolitical challenges we face. (shrink)

For feminists, working in/with the ‘posts’ is, always has been, and must be, a collective and collaborative endeavour. Increasingly, post-inquiry involves taking seriously multiplicities of humans, nonhumans, more-than-and-other-than-humans, multispecies and natureculture entities, including viral, microbial, elemental and atmospheric relationalities. The individual papers in this Special Issue, this editorial, and the Special Issue as a whole attest to this imperative pull to the collective-collaborative in seeking to explore the entangled relations of/between feminisms and the ‘posts’. As a collaborative-collective multiplicity, the Special (...) Issue interrogates what these entangled relations offer for reconfiguring gender and education research, theory, pedagogic practice, activism and praxis. (shrink)

A feminist perspective on selfhood – bound to a perspective on otherness – is the main concern of this article. The resonance of this notion of selfhood both with ethical philosophy and with the language of humanism enables a deeper understanding of a feminist ethics as well as its internal tensions. The article considers the relationship of feminism and humanism as one of “paradoxical fluidity” rather than antithetical polarization, to explore the ways in which feminism’s alliance with contemporary (...) ethics exemplifies its paradoxical relation to humanism. The study then underlines the vital contribution of feminist discourse to an ethical understanding of selfhood and intersubjectivity. Finally, it examines the work of experimental Canadian poet Lola Lemire Tostevin, who reveals the importance of an ethical, feminist version of selfhood that highlights the insufficiency as well as the potential of both humanist and postmodern versions of subjectivity. (shrink)

This article examines the development of a multidimensional, transnational feminist research approach from and within Uganda in relation to a high-profile case of domestic violence and femicide of a middle-class, upper-caste Indian migrant woman in Kampala in 1998. It explores indigenous Ugandan public and Ugandan Asian/indian community interpretations and the dynamics of cross-racial feminist mobilisation and protest that emerged in response to the Joshi-Sharma domestic violence case. In doing so, it advocates for a transnational feminist research approach from (...) and within Uganda and the Global South that works against the grain of nationalist and nativist biases in existing feminist scholarly trends. This approach lays bare power inequalities and internal tensions within and across racialised African and Asian communities, and thus avoids the romanticisation of cross-racial feminist African-Asian solidarities. (shrink)

“Research assistant” is a term used to describe student researchers across a variety of contexts and encompasses a wide array of duties, rewards, and costs. As critical/qualitative scholars situated in a discipline that rarely offers funded research assistantships to graduate students, we explore how we have engaged in faculty-student research in one particularly understudied context: the independent study. Using narrative writing and reflection within a framework of collaborative autoethnography, the first three authors reflect as three “generations” of (...) protégés who were each mentored through independent studies during their MA programs by the fourth author. We explore the environmental context, mentor facets, and protégé facets that highlight the light and shadow, or successes and struggles, of our mentoring relationships. Reflecting on our own experiences of collaborative research through independent studies, we suggest a model of feminist research mentorship that may be enacted across disciplines. (shrink)

The variety of feminist thought has produced many fruitful discussions and debates. Liberal, radical, postmodern, psychoanalytic, and other feminists have criticized each others' work and underlying presuppositions. The aim of this paper is to point out a prejudice which has not yet received sufficient attention, although it lies at the base of a fair amount of feminist research: the bias that whereas men are bad and aggressive, women are good and peaceful. Although as an explicit view this contention has (...) been debated, its distortive influence on feminist research has so far remained undiscussed. In what follows I present examples of the effect of this bias on feminist research . Then I suggest why the bias has not yet been discussed . Finally I argue that feminist research should be as critically received and treated as any other. (shrink)

This article explains some moral dimensions of a transnational feminist research project designed to provide a better standard or metric for measuring poverty across the world. The author is an investigator on this project. Poverty metrics incorporate moral judgments about what is necessary for a decent life, so justifying metrics requires moral argumentation. The article clarifies the moral aspects of poverty valuation, indicates some moral flaws in existing global poverty metrics, and outlines some conditions for a better global metric. (...) It then explains the methodology used in our project, providing its moral rationale and discussing some remaining moral concerns. (shrink)

The effort to “appreciate” phenomenology and feminism in the study of quiltmaking discourse self-reflexively joins a philosophy of experience with a politics of women's experiences. At the same time it reveals method to be an embodied practice which involves knowledge as power, and it discovers power relations between researchers and the researched within particular contexts and relationships. For phenomenology, these reflections may encourage closer attention to the en-gendering and situating of the subject within social and cultural conditions. Also they (...) may challenge us to ask: who benefits from phenomenological understanding? For feminism, this effort may encourage greater self-critique in regard to the phenomena of women's experiences. Simultaneously, these reflections may temper an uncritical embracing of phenomenological methods. Perhaps these reflections can best be seen as a working out of a pattern that joins phenomenology, feminism, and their compatible and contradictory relations like the three layers of a quilt. In this embodied and ongoing labor of piecing and quilting I have attempted to expose the seams and the gaps rather than smooth over their differences. Research, like quiltmaking, functions as both a noun and a verb, a product and a practice, engaged bodily and mindfully as a project in the world. (shrink)

This essay explores social science researchers with ‘insider status’. This term describes a researcher who is a member of the population they are studying. The research in question involved a birth mother studying the impact of compulsory child adoption on birth mothers. Research that grows from traumatic experiences may involve a researcher revisiting painful memories through her interactions with participants. She may hold unconscious biases and preconceptions. If not exposed or addressed, this raises ethical implications and can negatively (...) affect the reliability of the findings. Personally motivated research can be validated with the use of reflexivity. Often used in feminist methodology, it demands that the researcher examines her own feelings, reactions, and motives, and how these influence the interactions with participants, the analysis and findings. This essay shows how these philosophies behind reflexivity operate in practice. By reflexively aligning my own personal journey alongside birth mothers’ narrative, I was able to recognise and validate the role of myself in my research. This allowed me to face up to and challenge my biases and to avoid hierarchy that commonly exists between researcher and participants. For me this process went beyond simply being ethical practice, opening up opportunities for both creative and personal transformations. (shrink)

Much is written about quantitative techniques and feminist and gender studies. Despite convincing arguments in favour of utilizing these methods, they are still largely absent in the heartland of gender studies. In this article, this is related to the observation that methods are tied to epistemological positions and consequently quantitative studies are a priori associated with overgeneralization. A new perspective – the diversity continuum – is presented in order to contextualize research and make it possible to judge it relatively. (...) This shows that quantitative research can increase the understanding of differences and similarities. Subsequently, it is discussed how quantitative research can be utilized to understand differences between people using existing basic techniques. In line with the conceptualization of diversity, this includes techniques to study intersectionality and how developments have different effects on men and women. The continuum and techniques are illustrated by an example of political interest. (shrink)

In this piece I have stated my case for the importance of the inclusion of subjectivity in the study of women's poverty. The relevance of the ideas discussed herein is not confined to this one research area, for the project of incorporation is crucial to any field of research which has a pertinence to the practical realities of women's lives. I have noted how through talking and prioritising principles we run the danger of evacuating the subject, for principles (...) cannot take into account the diversity of women's experiences based upon class, race, ethnicity, religion and sexual affiliation. I have also outlined the benefits that accrue to both researcher and participant, with the researcher gaining better insight and understanding of the women she is concerned with and accountable to in her work, and the participant being given the opportunity to tell her own story of her life, rather than have it told solely by the outsider interpreting it. As such she is actively participating in her life rather than simply being led through it, resulting in a form of empowerment that might otherwise be denied her. Subscription has been made to interviewing as a means of incorporating subjectivity into the research project. But the interview as a technique has been problematised, for only through problematisation can we hope to improve our research and strive to ensure that we heed the lessons we and others have learned through our practical activities. I am indebted to those more experienced feminist researchers whose work has influenced this project. And finally, this piece serves as a reminder to others engaged in work about or with women, that women in all diversity are the subjects we should be concerned with in debates on the subject of poverty. Lest we forget .. (shrink)

This unique book brings together international scholars from around the globe to examine how different feminist theories are being used in early childhood research, policy and pedagogy. The array of feminist discourses captured by the authors offer contextualised possibilities for disrupting dominant patriarchal beliefs and producing change. The authors address and challenge how early childhood experiences, institutions and practices produce gendered effects across and within diverse contexts and demonstrate how feminism(s) in action can be used to reconceptualise (...) class='Hi'>research methods, government policy, children's learning, teaching practice and educational resources. In this way, the book contributes to creating new knowledge connections and community alliances in the global effort to end gender-based inequalities across local and global communities. (shrink)

Drawing on 2 years of field research conducted between 2008 and 2010 in London’s Kurdish community, I discuss the practical and ethical challenges that confront researchers dealing with violence against women committed in the name of ‘honour’. In examining how feminist methodologies and principles inform my research, I address issues of researcher positioning and the importance of speaking with, rather than for, marginalised groups. I then explore the difficulties of operationalising this position when dealing with honour-based violence. Using (...) the interview data from the 2008–2010 study and a case study of the trial of Mehmet Goren (who was convicted in 2009 of murdering his daughter Tulay for supposedly dishonouring their family), I discuss the socio-cultural norms and values underlying honour codes, examining both the position of men and women in relation to the maintenance of family honour and the regulation of women’s sexuality and conduct. In particular, I explore the difficulties inherent in obtaining and understanding victims’ own personal narratives, especially in legal settings, while simultaneously showing how it is only through empowering women to speak for themselves that we will be able to bring about the deep societal changes needed to eradicate honour-based violence. (shrink)

We have seen through many examples that data science and artificial intelligence can reinforce structural inequalities like sexism and racism. Data is power, and that power is distributed unequally. This book offers a vision for a feminist data science that can challenge power and work towards justice. This book takes a stand against a world that benefits some (including the authors, two white women) at the expense of others. It seeks to provide concrete steps for data scientists seeking to learn (...) how feminism can help them work towards justice, and for feminists seeking to learn how their own work can carry over to the growing field of data science. It is addressed to professionals in all fields where data-driven decisions are being made, as well as to communities that want to better understand the data that surrounds them. It is written for everyone who seeks to better understand the charts and statistics that they encounter in their day-to-day lives, and for everyone who seeks to better communicate the significance of such charts and statistics to others. This is an example-driven book written with a broad audience of scholars, students, and practitioners in mind. It offers a way of thinking about data, both their uses and their limits, that is informed by direct experience, by a commitment to action, and by the ideas associated with intersectional feminist thought. (shrink)

This article reflects critically on the methodology of one feminist research project which is ongoing as we write. The project is titled “Assessing Development: Designing Better Indices of Poverty and Gender Equity” and its aim is to develop a better standard or metric for measuring poverty across the world. The authors of this article are among several philosophers on the research team, which also includes scholars from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology and economics. This article begin by explaining (...) why a new and better poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. It then describes our methodological goals and strategies and summarizes our research findings, showing how they diverge from standard assessments as a result the feminist methods we used. We conclude with some methodological lessons we learned and questions that we think remain to be addressed. (shrink)

In this article, we give an overview over both past and present as well as possible future debates around recognition in and in connection with feminist thought. In principle, recognition can involve persons, collectives, and institutions, but here we are primarily concerned with the recognition of persons by other persons. In the first section, we start with a discussion of care as a form of recognition and the recognition of care work. In the second section, we turn to critiques of (...) recognition in feminist thought. In the third section, we outline a new field of research that should be of interest to both feminist and recognition theorists, namely our credibility economy. Since there is a separate article on Judith Butler and queer feminism in this handbook, we exclude their contributions from our discussion here. (shrink)

Throughout Iran and various countries, the recent calls of the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (in Persian), “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (in Kurdish), or “Woman, Life, Freedom” (in English) movement call for change to acknowledge the importance of women. While these feminist protests and demonstrations have been met with brutality, systematic oppression, and internet blackouts within Iran, they have captured significant social media attention and coverage outside the country, especially among the Iranian diaspora and various international organizations. This article, grounded in feminist urban (...) theories of the Global South, analyzes the digital feminist placemaking movement in Iran. As the first counter‐revolution led by women, the movement utilizes digital art, graffiti, and protest movements to embody women’s solidarity groups and sympathy rallies. Our analysis employs various digital research methods, including social media scrutiny and the study of protest illustrations. Analyzing the digital feminist placemaking in Iran will enable us to compare the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between the minorities and majorities in the world’s countries. The outcomes of this research can help international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women), as well as policymakers, institutions, academics, and NGOs, to highlight the various ways in which broader public participation could be encouraged in the process of digital feminist insurgent placemaking. (shrink)

Qualitative research from a feminist perspective in the postmodern era: methodological, ethical and reflexive concerns Developing methodology is an ongoing process in certain types of qualitative research. This paper describes the process in a study of single midlife women, detailing reflexive concerns on the ethics of data collection and dissemination of research findings from a feminist postmodern perspective, as well as the way in which modification of techniques of analysis occurred as the study progressed. Beginning research (...) questions were concerned with identifying the impact of menopausal symptoms, and the debate surrounding HRT on the lives and decision‐making processes of single midlife women. Initial analysis of data, using grounded theory techniques, indicated a need to place greater emphasis on the way the women constructed or talked about the self, including the embodied self. This led to an exploration of the literature relating to reflexivity, identity construction and embodiment, including feminist poststructuralist interpretations of the discursive and embodied construction of self, and informed both the theoretical framework and the method. The way in which a type of analysis fitting under the broad rubric of discourse analysis, that is one that gave added emphasis to gendered subjectivity, directed further analysis is discussed, as well as the influence on the women of social and scientific discourses in circulation. (shrink)

This paper describes some of the experiences of working with teenage girls' friendship groups at 'Hilltop', a large urban comprehensive school in the north of England. Working between and within mu...

In a recent essay — “How Can Feminist Theories of Evidence Assist Clinical Reasoning and Decision-making?” — Maya Goldenberg discusses criticisms of evidence-based medicine (or EBM) (Goldenberg 2013). She is particularly interested in those criticisms that make use of an epistemic appeal to the underdetermination of theory by evidence...

This study explores the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of female representation in Chinese and Japanese Otome games, examining their role in shaping contemporary feminist discourse and evolving cultural identities. By adopting a cross-cultural comparative approach, the research analyzes how these games construct female roles and reflect shifting attitudes toward gender, agency, and morality within their respective societies. It further investigates how Confucian, Shinto, and Buddhist influences inform the portrayal of femininity, virtue, and self-realization in Otome narratives, shaping not only (...) entertainment experiences but also deeper philosophical and ethical reflections. Findings indicate that Otome games in Japan and China present distinct frameworks of female identity, shaped by historical, social, and religious traditions. While Japanese Otome games often emphasize traditional romantic ideals influenced by Shinto and Confucian ethics, Chinese Otome games increasingly integrate progressive feminist elements while retaining cultural values rooted in collectivism and virtue ethics. Furthermore, as Chinese Otome games absorb international influences, they exhibit an emerging synthesis of feminist thought with spiritual and moral considerations, contributing to the formation of a "new female culture" that navigates between tradition and modernity. By situating these findings within the broader discourse of religious philosophy and gender studies, this paper offers insights into the intersection of spirituality, gaming, and cultural evolution. The research argues that Otome games serve not only as entertainment media but also as platforms for philosophical reflection on gender roles, selfhood, and moral agency. Future studies should further explore the theological and ethical implications of digital narratives in shaping contemporary understandings of femininity, empowerment, and spiritual identity. (shrink)