Researching women’s leadership in Asia and the Pacific – reflections on feminist research approaches in design and in practice

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) and partners have navigated the complexities and, sometimes competing, priorities, of feminist research methodology and values, in our practice. It demonstrates how, ultimately, decision-making processes along the way have been guided by the feminist values that underpin the research designs and the assertion that the process is as important as the outcome. We reflect in particular on the design and practice of two research projects undertaken by IWDA with partner women’s rights organisations in Asia Pacific. Under the Women’s Action for Voice and Empowerment programme, the projects – the Women’s Leadership Pathways research project and the Public Perceptions of Women as Leaders research project – explore the enablers and barriers to women’s leadership, from both public and private perspectives. The designs of both projects are mindful of hierarchies of authority and knowledge within the research processes that reinforce the status quo and power dynamics between the ‘expert’ and the ‘subject’ of the research. They also challenge the dynamics of power around the production and ownership of knowledge in academic spaces. They do this through collaborative designs that are locally led and owned, and through a strong valuing of women’s voices in research.     

Volunteers in feminist Organizations

The use of women volunteers, a hotly debated issue among feminists in the 1970s, currently receives little attention, even in the literature. What few studies are available are often contradictory. These studies approach the issue of women volunteering from three main perspectives: (1) as a substitute for work, especially for married women, (2) as a stepping stone for reentry into the work force, or (3) as a form of exploitation. Two main groups of women volunteers are identified in the literature: middle- to upper-class civic leaders and lower- to middle-class service providers. In this article, we examine whether the use and management of women volunteers in feminist organizations is consistent with feminist ideology that opposes unpaid work by women. Our findings, based on a comprehensive study of fifteen feminist organizations, indicate that the use of volunteers is often contrary to feminist ideology. We conclude with a discussion of ways in which volunteer management in feminist organizations can be made more compatible with feminist ideology.     

Feminism and bioethics: an overview

Despite differences in style, tone, and emphasis, the various schools of feminist thought share a primary concern with the stories and lives of women. This concern gives them distinctive perspectives on medical practice and the field of bioethics.     

TOWARD A SYNTHESIS OF FEMINIST AND DEMOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES ON FERTILITY

In explaining fertility and reproduction and emerging patterns of childbearing, both demographers and feminists have centered their thinking on women's status (economic and social), women's changing roles and life experiences (increased labor force participation, increased availability of reproductive options, declining marriage rates in many parts of the industrialized world, and the centrality of women to development), and women as agents in micro- and macrolevel changes in family, fertility, and economic change. Although demography has recently begun to integrate feminist perspectives into fertility explanations, there is not yet a synthesis of feminist theoretical insights with demographic questions. Drawing from recent thinking on global and national political and policy challenges in the less and more developed worlds, to the epistemological shifts in knowledge of reproduction/mothering, to changes in the technologies of reproduction, this article moves toward an integration of feminist and demographic perspectives on fertility.
…far from the economic dependence of women working in the interests of motherhood, it is the steadily acting cause of a pathological maternity and a declining birthrate.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Women and Economics , 1899     

Feminist social theory needs time. Reflections on the relation between feminist thought,social theory and time as an important parameter in social analysis1

This paper explores the relation between feminist concerns, social theory and the multiple time aspects of social life. It is suggested that while feminist approaches have been located in classical political philosophy, the same imposed classification has not occurred with respect to social theory perspectives. Rather than seeing this as an academic gap that needs filling, it was taken as an opportunity to take note of the wide variety of feminist approaches to methodological and theoretical issues and to relate these to concerns arising from a focus on the time, temporality, and timing of social life. It is argued that a feminist social theory, as an understanding of the social world through the eyes of women, is not only complemented by such a focus on time but dependent on it for an opportunity to transcend the pervasive vision of the ‘founding fathers’.     

A Reappraisal of the Quality of Women Candidates

Abstract

This article focuses on “second-wave” feminist perspectives on the role of the state and its effectiveness in removing gender-based inequality in Indian society. The major argument is that feminist rethinking of the relationship of women to the state illustrates the maturity of the Indian women's movement and its recognition that well-planned, mobilized, and effective state policies are crucial to the promotion of women's interests. Recent scholarship has addressed, more systematically and more critically than any in the past, the nexus between social and political processes and the subordination of women. It provides a contextualized and nuanced understanding of the complex interconnections between gender, state, religion, and community. Consequently, not only have feminist writings of the past two decades in India added to current gender sensitive scholarship on the state and development, they have also facilitated the construction of programmatic guides for realizing “strategic gender interests.”     

Teaching the history of women in sociology: Or Dorothy Swaine Thomas,wasn’t she the woman married to William I.?

One characteristic of feminist scholarship is the attention paid to the lost history of women in a wide variety of arenas. This interest stems from the insight that history is a social construction. As such, it is likely influenced by sexist assumptions. This train of thought led to the author’s interest in the possibility that sexism had biased both the opportunities for women in the past and the way the history of sociology had been conceived. This article describes an effort to explore these questions in an undergraduate research seminar. The article describes a variety of means the author used to unveil these problems with her students, and to engage them in asking new questions, reading standard sociological materials in critical ways, and working toward the creation of a less biased understanding of the history of sociology. The reactions of the students and professor, and the products of this course are specified. This course is one of many examples of the way feminist questions and perspectives have the potential for transforming sociology. Shulamit Reinharz is an associate professor of society at Brandies University and the author ofOn Becoming a Social Scientist (Transaction 1984). Her recent articles in feminist sociology focus on such areas as the meaning of miscarriage, the integration of gerontological and feminist theory, an analysis of the ideology of socialist Zionist feminist, Manya Wilbushewitz Shohat, and an overview of the work of Mirra Komarovsky.     

Women Managers,Gendered Cultural Processes and Organizational Change

This paper develops a critical approach towards the nature of research and knowledge about Women in Management (WIM). A variety of perspectives in the WIM area are reviewed from an inter-disciplinary standpoint. Drawing on radical approaches to organization analysis, the paper aims to evaluate the insights provided into the position of women in management from the perspectives outlined. It is argued that feminist approaches which focus on the gendered nature of organizational processes and in particular organizational cultures, represent an important way forward in the development of adequate theorizations of the position of women managers. The paper examines the implications of this analysis for the Women in Management research agenda and explores appropriate strategies for organizational change within this arena.     

The War at Home:

This essay explores the relationship between positivist epistemology, legal analysis, and the prosecution of pregnant women. Drawing on feminist analysis of science, the paper argues that legal thought and practice have been seriously distorted by positivist perspectives, especially in terms of narrow notions of what constitutes cause and effect. The critique of positivism provides a basis for reconceiving legal responses to drug use by pregnant women that are consistent with expanded notions of legal causation. Such an expansion provides the intellectual justification for expanding institutional interventions and encouraging a generally fairer and more satisfying politics.     

‘There is always this feeling of otherness’: exploring the lived experiences of visually impaired immigrant women in Canada

This paper explores the experiences of immigrant women with visual impairment in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) of Canada. Conceptually, the paper draws from feminist disability theory and critical scholarship on blindness to consider the discursive and material processes shaping women’s experiences across different socio-cultural contexts. Empirically, the paper draws from in-depth interviews with seven women. The analysis is organized around three themes. The first explores women’s understandings of visual impairment. The second examines the ways in which women’s experiences of visual impairment are shaped by meanings and attitudes that circulate within their cultural communities, and the extent to which immigration might challenge or reinforce these meanings. The third examines the shifting barriers and opportunities women face with respect to social and economic participation. We close by identifying the conceptual implications of our research.     

Gender,visuality and violence: visual securitization and the 2001 war in Afghanistan

Visual securitization (the discursive processes by which images are assigned security implications) is integral to understanding how war and political violence is made possible. However, its insights have yet to be coupled with feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, which is alert to the connections between gender and (in)security. This article synthesizes these two research areas through Lene Hansen’s (2011) framework of visual securitization to investigate the gendered logics that underpinned the 2001 war in Afghanistan. By analyzing 123 photojournalistic images alongside American media texts and foreign policy discourse, I argue western images of Afghan women enacted a specific visuality through which they became constructed as a legitimate matter of security. The article makes two important contributions through this analysis. Firstly, it extends feminist understanding of the war in Afghanistan by demonstrating how the interplay between the visual and textual, and the gendered and racial logics operating within such interplay, visually produced Afghan women as a referent object of security. Secondly, this argument illustrates how gender can be critical in enabling the acceptance of visual securitizations, and how such securitizations can be enacted through gendered representations of insecurity and threat.     

Suicidal Ideation in the Palliative Care Patient: Considerations for Health Care Practice

In the present study, I outline how four social workers, with experience in working with women who self-starve, commonly known as anorexia nervosa, conceptualise this phenomenon. I conducted single, in-depth interviews with each worker and feminist discourse analysis was chosen as the method of text interpretation. Alternative (non-psychiatric) ways of understanding women's self-starvation were explicitly privileged. Hence, the alternative discourses of feminist and poststructural theories were used to design the research and analyse the data. The literature review outlines the historical ‘discovery’ of ‘anorexia nervosa’ as a discrete illness category. Contemporary and dominant ‘pathological’ perspectives and marginalised ‘cultural’ perspectives are presented. Three dominant themes emerged from the interviews. They were ‘control and perfection’, ‘femininity’ and ‘self-destruction/self-preservation’. These themes are presented, as are their critical implications for social work.     

Knowledge and Women's Interests: Issues of Epistemology and Methodology in Feminist Sociological Research*

This analysis focuses on feminist methodology in the field of sociology by surveying the techniques used in recent research concerning gender-related topics as well as feminist analyses of epistemological assumptions underlying the conduct of inquiry. In addition to the critique and reformulation of standard research practice, feminist methodology involves the development of innovative methodological approaches, including visual techniques, conversational and textual analysis, and analysis of spontaneous events. Linked to the development of innovation is the feminist analysis of the epistemological assumptions which underlie different ways of knowing. These principles of feminist knowledge include (1) the necessity of continuously and reflexively attending to the significance of gender relations as a basic feature of all social life, including the conduct of research; (2) the centrality of consciousness-raising as a specific methodological tool and as a “way of seeing;” (3) the need to challenge the norm of “objectivity” that assumes a dichotomy between the subject and object of research; (4) the concern for the ethical implications of research; and (5) an emphasis on the transformation of patriarchy and the empowerment of women.     

Agents for Change and Changed Agents: The Micro‐politics of Change and Feminism in the Academy

This article explores gender politics and processes in the academy and investigates change from the perspectives of feminist academics. In particular, it explores the experiences of women academics attempting to effect change to the gendered status quo of their own institutions. Focusing on micro‐politics, the feminist movement is empirically explored in localized spaces of resistance and in the small but significant individual efforts at making changes in academic institutions. The analysis is based on interviews with female academics working in business and management schools and focuses on the challenges for change and how change attempts affect their personal and professional identities. The article explores the range of change strategies that participants use as they try to progress in their academic career while staying true to their feminist values and priorities through both resisting and incorporating dominant discourses of academic work. The analysis highlights such tensions and focuses on a contextualized, bottom‐up perspective on change that, unlike more totalizing theorization, takes into account mundane and lived experiences at the level of the individual.     

In transition: The Women's House Saving Action

Ce compte-rendu de la campagne pour la préservation de l'une des grandes institutions féministes à Vancouver est centré sur la relation entre l'État et les mouvements sociaux. Loin de se limiter au simple récit des événements présentés comme une lutte entre les féministes et l'État, il met au jour les complexités d'un mouvement dont les ramifications s'étendent à l'État, à la société civile et à d'autres mouvements sociaux. L'image centrale du changement est tirée des expériences de femmes en transition dont le mouvement doit ětre compris comme une ouverture sur le monde et une réflexion critique sur les relations existantes. C'est ce processus qu'on voit à l'oeuvre dans la campagne de défense de la Maison des femmes de Vancouver. This account of the campaign to save a major feminist institution in Vancouver focuses on the relation between the state and social movements. It goes beyond a simplistic rendering of the story as a struggle between feminists and the state, to reveal the complexities of a movement that overlaps the state, civil society, and other social movements. The central image of change is drawn from the experiences of women in transition, whose movement is best understood as an opening toward the world and a critical rethinking of existing relationships. This is the process we see in the Women's House Saving Action.     

Evangelical Women and Feminism:

Although a number of studies have demonstrated that evangelical women are more likely than other women to take anti-feminist positions, recent research suggests that there might be substantial support among evangelicals for certain feminist positions. Using data from the 1984 American National Election study, we find that evangelical women are indeed more antifeminist than other women, but that a sizable minority take feminist positions on a number of issues. Approximately one in six can be classified as having a politicized feminist consciousness, while an additional quarter are potential converts to the feminist cause. These potential feminists are fairly negative toward the feminist movement, however. This is due in part to the association by many evangelical women between the women's movement, lesbian rights, and abortion.     

Gender and Families: Feminist Perspectives and Family Research

This review provides a selective overview of scholarship on gender and families over the past decade. First, we discuss four characteristics of feminist perspectives to theoretical and methodological issues in social science. Then we describe briefly how feminist sensibility has been reflected in family scholarship over the past decade. We conclude with brief observations on the disjuncture between academic work on gender and the feminist backlash apparent in the contemporary culture.     

Formerly Incarcerated Women Speak Out

This article presents the stories of formerly incarcerated women as they transition from prison back to their communities. The purpose of the article, based on feminist and visual ethnographic research methods, is to learn from the women themselves about the entities that support their efforts to rebuild their lives and stay out of prison as well as the barriers that impede such efforts. A major focus of this article is the women who mobilized on behalf the civil and human rights for all formerly incarcerated people and thus become their own advocates for change in policies and societal attitudes toward those with criminal records.     

Medicalization, Natural Childbirth and Birthing Experiences

Although much of the early sociological and feminist analysis of medicalization focused on reproductive issues and childbirth, attention has moved away from this topic over time as new conditions have become subject to the medicalization process. At the same time, one of the major concepts within this analytical framework, the dichotomy of 'natural' versus 'medical', has not been sufficiently problematized. In this article, we call for a renewed examination of the medicalization of childbirth from a critical perspective that neither takes for granted the meaning of this dichotomy, nor presupposes feminist perspectives or those of privileged groups of women. We revisit sociological frameworks and feminist critiques of medicalization, specifically around childbirth, and review scholarship that addresses their limitations. We propose a research agenda that goes beyond the traditional assumptions about 'natural' and 'medical' childbirth and examines more closely how medicalization processes both shape and conflict with women's subjective experiences of childbirth.