Feminism as a social and political movement is concerned with establishing and defending the political, economic, and social rights of women.

Feminists have consistently challenged a range of hitherto taken for granted institutional and social practices which they see as biased or skewed in favour of men. Feminist movements have, for example, campaigned for the right to vote, to own property, to have redress in cases of physical abuse within marriage and for the rights of girls to have access to education, not to be coerced into female circumcision, not to be coerced into marriage. Feminism, however, looks beyond the legal to consider and critique the social cultural factors which have held women back from taking a full and equal part in society's institutions, for example by challenging underrepresentation of women in government, legal institutions and the so called 'glass ceiling' in the professions.

This critique of bias extends to academic institutions and, not surprisingly, feminists have drawn attention to skewed representation both in the makeup of academic institutions and in published output: for many feminists academic research has typically been written by men and for men with inequality between genders something to be taken for granted. Gender is, arguably, no longer of marginal concern in academia and as a matter of routine many, though by no means all, academics are sensitised to the issues thrown up by gender inequality and consider gender as a 'variable' in their research. Many mainstream researchers, both male and female, who would not necessarily identify themselves as feminist, have contributed to documenting the experiences of women as professionals, as mothers, as providers for families and in some notable cases to exposing the extent and consequences of oppression.

Such research is of interest and concern to feminist researchers but feminist methodology is not confined to an interest in gender: rather it often argued that there is a distinctive feminist methodology and something profoundly different in the way men and women carry out research. In particular feminist methodology sees inequalities between men and women as the most fundamental divide in society which feminist research should address by exposing the marginalisation of women wherever it occurs, by explaining how oppressive practices have become normalised and by giving voice to those who have challenged constraints and oppression. This provides feminist research with a particular concern for ethics and a commitment to addressing inequality in the design of the research, how the research is carried out and the use made of the research. This is often manifested in a concern for the relationship between researchers and researched and a commitment to change. Just as feminism is alert to asymmetrical power relationships between men and women, feminist methodology has a special interest in the relationship between researcher and the research (e.g Harding, 1987). Feminist researchers want to do things differently and they frequently seek to enlist those who are being researched as participants or collaborators in the research (see Morrow, 2006 in collaboration). Indeed this not just an ethical position but also an epistemological one and 'standpoint' feminist methodology argues that research that starts from examining women‟s lives will present a less distorted view of the social world (Harding 2004). Feminist research has a particular concern for the interconnectedness, very broadly the degree to which research outputs are recognisable to participants, and sees research as a negotiation of meaning with participants. In doing so feminist researchers argue that as women researching women they have a shared insider understanding of the experiences of those they are researching even if, at the same time, they are ways in which their position as researchers may give them asymmetrical access to resources and social capital. To address this, feminist research seeks to make positionality transparent and typically engages in reflexive exploration of both ethical and epistemological issues (see Huisman (2008) as an example in positionality).

Feminist researchers want not only to understand the inequality between men and women but to change it; they want to use their research to serve the interests of women. This commitment is capable of broad interpretation but one way in which it can be demonstrated is in taking care to identify issues which have a particular concern for women and have been generated by women themselves. Research should have both general utility in highlighting inequality and a particular value for the participants of the research: through collaborative activity the research should have some impact on those involved for example in generating feeling of greater agency and self-efficacy, if not empowerment (Cook and Fonow, 1986). Feminist research does not include or preclude particular research strategies but in practice it has been associated with broadly 'qualitative' methods such as interviews, participant observation, focus groups and so on. While by no means unique in the methods it uses feminist research is distinctive in the way that methods are used. For example an interview may be re-interpreted as a negotiation of meaning rather than an attempt to capture an impersonal truth and feminist interviews will seek to establish non hierarchical and more natural relationships with participants (as an example see Oakley's (1979) comments on interviewing in her research into motherhood).

Those undertaking feminist research need to carry out their work in an environment in which the concerns of feminism and feminist methodology are understood and supported. Feminist researchers need to be aware of tensions within their methodology and indeed within feminism itself: for example a key question is the extent to which gender should be considered the rather than a primary distinction in human experience standing above, say, ethnicity and class. Researchers should be aware of the shifts in feminist thinking over time. They will need to back up claims made for the collaborative and the empowering nature of their research and appreciate that these claims are often treated sceptically (see collaboration). Feminist researchers need to balance emic and etic reporting and constantly revisit the criteria used for judging the quality or trustworthiness of an account. Finally they need to address the ever present, though now rather stale, question as to whether feminism is in fact a distinctive methodology (see Ramazanoglu and Holland, 2002) given that some of its methodological concerns are shared by other researchers taking an anti-positivism approach and that a commitment to action is shared within participatory action research in general.

References

Cook, J. and Fonow, M. M. (1986). Knowledge and women's interests: Issues of epistemology and methodology in feminist sociological research. Sociological Inquiry, 56, 1 2-29.

Harding, S. (Ed.)(1987) Feminism and methodology, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Harding, S. (Ed) (2004) Introduction: standpoint theory as a site of political, philosophic and scientific debate' in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, S. Harding (ed.), New York: Routledge.

Ramazanoglu C. and Holland, J. (2002) Feminist methodology: Challenges and choices, London: Sage.