|
What is Feminist Research? |
Bridging the Gap: June 22-24, 2001 at Boston College |
Yoland Wadsworth |
What is feminist research?
This
paper was written in 1991 in response to requests for a simple description of
what `doing feminist research' might mean and how it might differ from other
research? It was written by and
for non academic, mostly community-based women, researchers and groups. It was an attempt to address questions
like: What could we expect of others or ourselves if we were to claim we were
`doing feminist research'? It was
no simple matter to try and condense (the then) twenty years of complex debates
about both feminism and feminist methodology that we had been part of into a
few pages!, however we offered this paper as `a starter' for those seeking an
introduction to the area.
Both
Yoland and Kaye had been working as researchers in community and government
settings for the twenty years since they were at Monash University doing
sociology together – Yoland
mostly in human services and Kaye mostly in women’s labour and industry. Kaye had been a co-director of the
Western Region Centre for Working Women where she was instrumental in
contributing to the conditions for an outworker’s indutrial award. Her best known book was Women at
Work in Australia (Penguin,
). Yoland had recently
established the Melbourne Action Research Issues Centre and was author of the
national best-selling introductory books Do It Yourself Social Research and Everyday
Evaluation On The Run (2nd
editions, both Allen & Unwin, 1997).
Both were members of the Action Research Issues Association (Inc.)
Some
key characteristics of feminist research
Feminist
research is research which is carried out by women who identify as feminists,
and which has a particular purpose for knowing (a `why'), particular kinds of
questions, topics and issues to be known about (a `what'), and an identifiable
method of knowing (a `how'), which distinctly draw on women's experience of
living in a world in which women are subordinate to men.
Why
feminism?
`The
most central and common belief shared by all feminists, whatever our
"type" is the presupposition that women are oppressed. It is from this common acceptance that
there is indeed a problem, that there is something amiss in the treatment of
women in society, that feminism arises.' (Stanley and Wise, 1983)
If
there is a central reason why feminists do feminist research it revolves around
the need to know and understand better the nature of the hurt we sustain as a
group - a group which is subordinated on the grounds of our female gender. This is not `knowledge for its own
sake' but rather is knowledge explicitly dedicated to bringing about change and
improvement in our situation as women.
Different
ways of seeing `the problem' (and `the solution')
There
are many different views amongst women who identify themselves as feminists
about what our oppression entails, what are its sources and what should be done
about it. For example, some
feminists see the problem of women as one of having been `left out' - of
positions of power, from written history, and from everyday conversations. Others may see the problem as one of
having been actively excluded through a more or less deliberate, even if
unconscious effort by men. Others
may question the kinds of situations women have been left out of or excluded
from, and not want to be included (or fight for) positions that are elitist and
oppressive. Some may see the
matter as originating from men's fear and contempt for women, or from men's
greater physical power, or from a determination not to lose historical and
economic advantages over women, or from habitual socialisation, or a
combination of these.
Some
women may see the answer in asking men to change their ways. Others may see it more as a matter of
having to make demands in the face of inevitable resistance, requiring a far
more concerted attack. Some may
devote their energies to the reform of social institutions to include
women. Some may turn away altogether
from men and the organisations they control and concentrate instead on
strengthening women as a group from within and to examining all existing
knowledge with a view to constructing new knowledge in women's interests. Kath Davey reminds us of Shug's words
to Celie in the film `The Colour Purple': `You can't see anything at all till you
git man off your eyeball.' Some
may see this move as strategic, while others may see it as a permanent solution
to `the problem of men'. Some
women will seek to increase their education and income levels, own their own
homes, `reclaim the night', organise collectively for equal pay, or seek each
other out for support. Women may
call themselves radical feminists, socialist feminists, humanist feminists,
separatist feminists, femocrats, liberal feminists and so on, to express in
shorthand form their different positions on `the problem'.
All
of these different `feminisms' lead to women's differing interests in topics
for research, differing preference for techniques, differing theories for
interpreting what they see as going on, and differing conclusions about what
new actions to take.
Feminists
have sought firstly to understand our own experiences as women in a culture
which many of us have found it useful to describe as `patriarchal'.1 Like all `new paradigm science'2,
feminist research starts from the personal experience of unease about a
difference between the way things are and the way we might prefer them to be,
whether in our `private' lives at home or at work. In research this is
sometimes referred to as starting from
a `discrepancy' between an `is' and a sense of an `ought'. Perhaps the largest proportion of
feminist research has been devoted to hearing women speak, in our own words,
about our own such experiences3: experiences of being women, of being
frustrated, humiliated, subordinated and put down, of being invisible, of
violence and of being violated, of losing and regaining self regard, of being
trapped and of gaining or regaining freedom, of rising above difficult times;
and of our history and cultural heritage over the centuries and millennia, of
our childhoods, our teenage years, our young adulthood, of being wives and
mothers, of being single women, of getting educations and jobs, of being in the
paid and unpaid workforces, of institutions we find ourselves in (or excluded
from, or incarcerated in) - schools, hospitals, churches, work organisations,
parliament, bureaucracies, unions, marriages, prisons and psychiatric
institutions - and of all the contradictions of being in or out of them; and of
our experiences with men, of being of different class, ethnic and racial
backgrounds; of our bodies and their reflections of our oppression, of our
illnesses and addictions, of menstruation and of menopause, of having different
abilities and disabilities, of growing older, of chronic and acute illness, and
of dying.
However
this exchange of experiences is not without judgement. It is not merely research `about'
women, but instead is research `for' and `by' women. That is, whenever women do feminist research they take a
step beyond merely hearing each other.
Instead the hearing is for a higher purpose - in order to derive better
understanding, and identify ways to bring about change to alter the
subordinated and oppressed position of women. Thus, while feminist research commences with a first
essential `experiential' (or `phenomenological') step, it moves secondly to
ask: `Given that this is how we currently experience things - how can we
explain these experiences? what
are desirable experiences? how
could things be improved?'
The
importance of context
To
take this step, women then explore the contexts and reasons for why we
experience what we experience. We
examine history, the economy, the political economy and material realities, and
ask who benefits, and how it is that unhelpful but dominant ideas are held in
place (such as `women must be youthful and beautiful', or `father knows best',
or `boys will be boys'). We ask
how it is that we find ourselves colluding with these ideas that hurt us; what
are we up against when we try and resist or act differently; what are our
successes and triumphs and the conditions for these, and so on. Importantly, we may also research men,
men's actions, and ideology, practices and institutions which favour men, or we
might research men and women together.
All of these questions comprise the critical process of examining the
`structural' matters which surround and shape us, so that we can begin to form
theories about alternative ways of acting.
At
the commencement of `second wave feminism' in the 1960s and 1970s, women
gathered in self-study groups (called consciousness-raising or `cr' groups) in
their suburban family homes and in student households. These were very similar to third world
study circles where people gathered to discuss matters troubling them, and to
seek to transform personal experience of the world into collective
understanding of how the world was operating to oppress some to the benefit of
others.
Some
`cr' groups used what might now be called `participatory action research' to
discuss, study and possibly read about issues, and then draw conclusions about
what to do, then take those actions, and then review them to decide on new
actions. Out of these groups arose
many concepts and ideas (such as women's liberation, sexism, male chauvinism,
etc.) and services and changes familiar to us now, such as child care centres
and other children's services, women's health services, termination and
sterilisation services, neighbourhood houses, non sexist books and writing,
equal opportunity and anti discrimination legislation, income security for
single mothers, refuges for women fleeing domestic violence, and moves towards
equal pay. As well, a whole
generation of mature-aged women returned to study and jobs, earned independent
incomes and came to own their own homes in unprecedented numbers.
Each
new wave of theorising about women's lives yielded new topics and new areas
requiring study. Initial efforts
were around what would comprise non sexist children's books and school teaching
or more acceptable presentation of images of women in the media. These were followed by examination of
the ways in which the publishing industry operates or how the culture of the
media is constituted both by everyday practice and managerial
decision-making. Initial
redefining of women and `madness' shifted to researching ways to systematically
alter mental health services.
Current feminist research interests are in examining the culture of
violence, men as perpetrators of violence, the relationship between sex and
power, and the nature of each area of male-dominated knowledge - arts, science,
religion, architecture, literature, technology and so on.
While
women in suburbs and in the country were meeting around kitchen tables and
demanding neighbourhood houses, academic feminists were developing a critique
of the hurtful experience of being subjected to conventional social science or
of themselves having inflicted this methodology on their sisters. These insights have begun to accumulate
into a more explicit account of how feminists can best go about the particular
task of `doing feminist research' - whether they be feminist researchers who
are anthropologists, consumers, epidemiologists, family members, farmers,
historians, household members, houseworkers, medical scientists, members of any
profession or discipline, members of resident action associations or ethnic
organisations, mothers, philosophers, psychologists, readers of newspapers and
magazines, service-users, shoppers, sociologists, statisticians, unionists,
women with disabilities, and women who use social security, libraries, public
transport, and cinemas. Wherever
women experience the world - and record their experiences in systematic ways to
exchange and together develop theory and improved practice - women can work in
ways which approximate a model of feminist research.
How
feminists go about doing feminist research
Methods
and methodology
Feminist
researchers, depending on their definition of `feminism', will develop methods
and preferences for techniques that they see as yielding the best results for
women. Some women may use standard
surveys, collect numerical information, and perform statistical computations,
in order to establish matters of extent or amount regarding women's position
vis a vis men's. Others will
undertake secondary analysis of documentary material and policy papers or
research and develop new policy and assess its impact on the position of
women. Other women will
concentrate on directly hearing the stories of women - perhaps using more or
less in-depth interviews or ethnographies, recording verbal information, and
writing them up and publishing.
Still others will work more as members of groups of women doing their
own self-directed research, much as did the CR groups of early `second wave'
feminism. All of these techniques
and methods continue to be subjected to healthy internal debate about whether
or not, and in what ways, they may further perpetuate or alternatively
contribute to interrupting patterns of oppression of women.
Some
feminist researchers have attempted to articulate what are the criteria or
grounds on which research might be more likely to perpetuate and reproduce, or
alternatively, to illuminate, confound and alter patterns of oppression. Some of these major points are
summarised below:
Research
may be more likely to address women's oppression if it:
. understands
that all research is essentially value-driven and always results in some kind
of new action or practice, and consequently examines its own values and
contribution to altering (or perpetuating) existing situations;
. is
`driven' by the interests of the women whose problematic situation was the
reason for the raising of the research questions in the first place;
. involves
as many such women as is desirable and feasible in the collaborative design and
conduct of the research;
. involves
maximum attention to the benefits for the women involved (eg. way beyond merely
enjoying the chance to talk about things, and reaching towards genuine
self-generation of understanding and new personal ways of being and acting),
and less emphasis on the benefits to a single researcher (tertiary
qualifications, improved cv, published books or articles, career promotions,
etc.);
. questions,
and otherwise disrupts the reproduction and perpetuation of power relationships
that subordinate women `subjects' as objects of someone else's study; and
instead embraces as many women as is desirable and feasible as participants in
a joint effort;
. respects
and values women's experiences and their accounts of them, creating a
collective `culture' for the respectful sharing and examination of all relevant
participants' experiences;
. hears
and reflects back exactly what is of most concern and interest to women;
. does
not only `study down' but also researches other powerful or elite parties'
contribution to women's oppression (eg. that of men, professionals,
bureaucracies, television, radio, videos, magazines, etc.);
. uses
conceptual language which accurately names the phenomena (eg. `criminal or
illegal assault in the home' rather than `domestic' or `family' violence; `wife
beating' rather than `spouse abuse'; or `women's resistance to isolation in the
home' rather than `suburban neurosis');
. makes
claims only which the women thus described recognise as their `truths' or as
valid or `objective' for them, and not claims which they may identify as distorting
or stereotyping or as making them appear invisible, deviant or deficient in
comparison to men;
. contextualises
and substantiates various truth claims so that other women can make their own
judgements, rather than attempting to identify something as a single
irrefutable truth;
. attempts
to represent the richness, complexity, interconnectedness, and contextualised
nature of women's experiences, rather than representing women's experiences in
categories which are either not useful or which too greatly distort or diminish
understanding;
. contributes
to women being able to identify new or better ways of understanding their
situation;
. results
in women being able to identify ways to change and improve their situation.
Techniques
used in feminist research are concerned to present women's perspective and are
more likely to be, particularly at the earliest points of inquiry,
`naturalistic' and resemble the normal ways women communicate, or involve
sources accessible to women. These
normal ways are the ones with which women feel most comfortable and thus
empowered to speak. Conversation,
group discussions, story-telling, and participant/observation
(participants-as-observers) are more likely to be used than more artificial
techniques such as questionnaires, one to one interviews, prestructured
schedules, scales and standardised inventories, and secondary materials
analysis. The latter kinds of
techniques may be used, but only if they appear to empower women and women
participants and are deemed by them the best ways of answering the particular
research questions at hand. When
using less directly democratic techniques, women may safeguard the ethics of
their research by assembling a reference group of women who can assist in
making decisions where women cannot be consulted (eg. use made of census
results or newspaper stories).
Other sources might include photographs, written and other documentary
records, historical archives, statistical and economic records, artefacts,
environment records, and so on.
Many women believe that feminist researchers should seek to use a
multiplicity of techniques to reflect the multidimensional nature of our
experiences.
In a
well-known article (1981), Ann Oakley called interviewing women a
`contradiction in terms'. Here she
reflected on the power dimension of research and the way in which a more
powerful woman who asks the questions and a less powerful woman who gives the
answers constitutes an uneasy relationship, and that a particular kind of
social reality is constructed from such an interaction. Such research may be uneasily close to
what two Melbourne researchers have termed `social voyeurism' and a `data raid'
or what Abraham Maslow has called `spectator knowledge'. Feminist researchers will be more
self-conscious of this matter and may alter their research designs to lessen
the impact of unequal power-holding (eg. work with groups or pairs, find
indigenous interviewers, opt for more collaborative designs, conceptualise
their task as the `sharing of stories', etc.).
Techniques are subjected to feminist ethical
analysis: does this technique disempower women? Will women be harmed by this approach - whether individually
or as a gender group? Will women's
knowledge and understanding most be furthered by this technique? and so on.
Record-keeping
and writing up
When
the research is driven by the concerns of the women whose particular oppression
has given rise to it, this not only shapes choice of techniques and of
explanatory theories, but also the forms in which its knowledge is recorded and
exchanged. Traditionally the
researcher kept all the fieldnotes and assumed rights to `write up' and publish
whatever and wherever she wishes.
Feminist research generates its own logic regarding what, how, where and
even whether there is a written record of the research. For example, participating women will
decide whether deeply personal revelations should be taped, transcribed and
written up, or whether `findings' may be shared within a group, perhaps on
butchers paper, and no special write up necessary - or just a strategic summary
or article produced. `Findings'
may take the form of a video, a tapestry, a collage, an artpiece, cartoons or
drama. They may be transformed
into a novel. Findings may be
contributed to a popular women's magazine rather than (or as well as) the usual
refereed professional journal.
More conventional research write-ups must also be able to communicate
with whatever audiences are in the interests of the women the research is
intended to benefit.
Matters
of confidentiality, accessibility, appropriateness, validity or trustworthiness
of data, rigour and the underlying issues of driving values and power and
control now become matters to be determined by or in consultation with the
women who are involved in and/or are to benefit from the research. The researcher no longer makes these
decisions unilaterally or without connection to other women.
All
women carry out their research under social and economic conditions currently
still oppressive of women. Thus
our efforts to transform women's oppression by using research, are also carried
out under these same difficult conditions and face the same associated barriers
and pressures. Subsequently, at
this point in time, feminist research can expect only to approximate any
ideal. It is perhaps more helpful
to think of all feminist research as more or less feminist research, rather
than taking an all-or-nothing approach and seeing research as either `feminist'
or `not feminist'.
Thus
feminist research may range from work which is more contested and needs to be
disguised in more hostile organisational settings, or work where women take a
more conventional stance of `studying down' and reporting on women in academic
journals or to policy makers in the hope of influencing decision-making men or
non-feminist women to improve the conditions of women's lives; to more overt or
explicit `qualitative' research that more directly seeks to involve women in
speaking through the researcher's write-ups to decision-makers and others; to
`critical' research which sets out to question and intervene more strategically
and more actively by `envoicing' women to speak directly to demand significant
change.
The
more that feminist research moves away from the approved and dominant ways of
doing things, the harder it often has found that it is to function. The harder it is to even find the words
to ask the unpermitted questions, the harder it is to find others who are
prepared to join a non popular project (or one labelled `radical'); and the
harder it is to find financial support, participants, resources, publishers and
peer approval. Much feminist
research requires huge courage, confidence and possibly independent means! Fortunately enough women have been
working for a long enough period of time, to have carved out a more comfortable
space in which many women can work.
Enough legitimacy has accrued to the questioning of women's subordination
to at least now make the feminist research endeavour possible and even
probable.
Nevertheless,
pressures on feminist research are firstly those which face any woman trying to
emerge from a subordinated position: pressures subtle and blatant to be
acceptable to men whether at home or at work or to other women who want to be
acceptable to men; to be `nice', polite, and modest; to be selflessly caring,
to be unquestioning, not to make men and other women feel uncomfortable or
offended, and to be grateful for existing mercies. Secondly the pressures are from those who would ensure
research is `scientific' - that is objective, comprises the `hard' facts, is
unbiased, and value-free. Thirdly
there are pressures wherever women are not acting with sovereignty over their
own lives, and the personal sphere of home and private life and the public
sphere of work are in conflict.
Any
funders, administrators, managers, professional groups or other parties who do
not share feminist research assumptions and who have power to impinge may
present barriers. Conventional
assumptions about who owns and controls research, its findings, its write-up,
and so on - may contradict the ethics which accompany feminist research. As well, since feminist research - like
all new paradigm science - raises the possibility of there being a far more
collaborative effort involved in social research, the question is raised:
`Should co-researcher/`subjects' also be salaried for their work?' This matter is increasingly being
addressed by research funders in other areas (eg. Aboriginal, general practice
and mental health research), as well as in feminist research where researchers
have more autonomy over funds in order to begin to `prefigure' appropriate
future practice.
If a
feminist is a woman who knows that she and other women are oppressed on grounds
of gender from personal experience, then a man will not be in a position to
either be a feminist or do feminist research. However a man can come to realise that women are oppressed
on grounds of gender from his own experience and that he and other men
collectively benefit from the oppression of women and take a position against
this.
Men
can be pro-feminist, and can engage in pro-feminist research (for example if
they can fulfil the conditions set out previously in this paper). However this may prove difficult for
men if they must therefore hand over the control of the design and carrying out
of `their' research to the critical reference group of women (who determine
whether it meets their interests and resolves their problem or not). They may also be less likely to
research women's experience directly (although this might be an initial phase,
perhaps through the study of feminist research literature, or by the conduct of
local, small-scale participatory action research with and for - and not on -
women in their own lives).
They
might be more likely to research their own dissatisfaction with elements of
patriarchy and turn their attention to how the structures of subordination of
women by men (and of some men by other men) are put in place and held in
place. The methodological approach
of feminists will be relevant to men seeking to research their experiences and
those of other men in order to transform subordinating practice. Objectifying, disempowering methods
will have as little place in their research as it has for feminist
researchers. It may be more
appropriate to talk about men carrying out anti-patriarchal research rather
than pre-feminist research.
NOTES
1 Patriarchal
- literally means the `rule of the father'. Patriarchal societies are structured by the dominance of
more experienced or authoritarian men who subordinate younger men, women,
children, animals and the rest of nature.
Subordination may involve ownership and/or responsibility rights. Men have sovereignty over others and
these others rely on men for the meeting of their basic needs. Within such a structure women may carve
out some areas of their own, but attempts to live independently of men, or even
in equal partnership with men, will be contested, resisted and contained.
2 `New
paradigm' science is a term being used to describe the kind of science which
accompanies - in the physical world - the shift from Newtonian to
post-Einsteinian physics, and - in the social world - the shift from
`positivism' to `critical interpretivism' or `constructivism'. `Positivism' refers to a school of
philosophical thought which saw the world as having a single `reality' which
existed independently of the observer, and which could only be discovered by an
objective and uninvolved scientist through acts of pure perception, ideally in
a laboratory setting where all variables could be controlled and manipulated,
and exact causation determined and measured. This account has been difficult to sustain - as with
Newtonian science - given the failure of such uninvolved scientists to actually
find out about the social world in ways which had validity in practice.
Far
more engaged inquiry - more like `going native' - has been found to yield far
better understanding. As well,
when the social world is encountered, it takes as many forms as there are
people. That is, understanding the
social world depends on the exchange and communication of interpretations about
what is going on. These are
multiple and may even be conflicting.
Furthermore the researcher cannot remain outside the world. As with post Einsteinian physics, `the
observed' is importantly constructed by `the observer' - and in the social
world, is then further reconstructed by the observed (sometimes in the light of
the observer's observations!). For
old paradigm science this is all so much unwanted `bias' and
`contamination'. For new paradigm
science it is the nature of the `beast', and all so much more material for
study. New paradigm science which
fully grasps the value-driven nature of inquiry is furthermore in a position to
focus its research in the interests of those who might problematise their
existing undesirable situations - thus offering a better chance of `driving'
theory towards better contributing to improved practice.
3
Other terms for this element of feminist research
may be `interpretive', `experiential', `phenomenological', `Verstehen' (which
means `understanding'), hermeneutic, `illuminative', `naturalistic',
`responsive', `constructivist' or `interactionist'. Primarily these approaches attempt to ensure that the
researcher understands how others see and comprehend the world, in their own
way, and using their own words. In
feminist research this is understood as involving an essentially communicative
or collaborative relationship between `researcher' and `researched'. As this increasingly involves the
exchange of perceptions, the boundaries between `researcher' and `researched' start
to break down as each becomes more informed about the other in order to better
communicate their own position, and collectively construct understanding,
theory and proposed new action.
BELENKY,
Mary Field, Blythe McVicker CLINCHY, Nancy Rule GOLDBERGER, and Jill Mattuck TARULE
(1986), Women's Ways of Knowing: the Development of Self, Voice and Mind, Basic Books, New York
BELL,
Colin and Helen ROBERTS (Eds.) (1984), Social Researching - Politics, Problems,
Practice, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Especially
the article `"It's great to have someone to talk to" - the ethics and
politics of interviewing women' pp 70-87
BLEIER,
R (Ed.) (1986), Feminists Approach to Science, Pergamon, Elmsford, New York
BOWLES,
Gloria and Renate Duelli KLEIN (Eds.) (1983), Theories of Womens Studies,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Especially
chapter 7 `How to do what we want to do: thoughts about feminist methodology'
by Renate Duelli Klein; chapter 9 `Towards a methodology for feminist research'
by Maria Mies; chapter 12 `Back into the personal or: our attempt to construct
"feminist research"' by Liz Stanley and Sue Wise; and Shulamit
Reinharz's contribution `Experiential Analysis: A contribution to feminist
research'.
CARTER
Kathryn and Carole SPITZACK (Eds) (1989), Doing Research on Women's
Communication: Perspectives on Theory and Method, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey
Particularly
chapter 8 `Interviewing Women: a phenomenological Approach to Feminist
Communication Research' by Kristin M. Langellier and Deanna L. Hall, and
chapter 9 `Phenomenology as Feminist Methodology: Explicating Interviews' by
Jenny L. Nelson
EICHLER,
Margrit (1988), Nonsexist Research Methods - a Practical Guide, Allen &
Unwin, Winchester, Mass.
Chapter
7 is a set of `Guidelines' which is similar to a standards manual, and there is
also an Appendix `Checklist'
HARDING,
Sandra (1986), The Science Question in Feminism, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, New York
HARDING,
Sandra (Ed) (1987), Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington
LATHER,
Patti (1991), Feminist Research in Education: Within/Against, Deakin University
Press, Geelong
ROBERTS,
Helen (Ed) (1981), Doing Feminist Research, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
A
classic and recommended reading; it includes Ann Oakley's article `Interviewing
Women: a contradiction in terms' pp 30-59
STANLEY,
Liz (Ed) (1990), Feminist Praxis, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
See
especially `Method, methodology and epistemology in feminist research
processes' by Liz Stanley and Sue Wise
STANLEY,
Liz and Sue WISE (1983), Breaking Out - Feminist Consciousness and Feminist
Research, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
This
paper has been written by Yoland Wadsworth and Kaye Hargreaves for the Action
Research Issues Association (Incorporated), as an information service to the
support and development of community programmes, and with funding assistance
from the Victorian Government – Department of Community Services
(CSV). Special thanks go to women
members of the Action Research Issues Association who discussed these ideas and
to Fiona McDermott who commented on the draft and particularly to Meg Montague
and Merinda Epstein for contributed material. Further thanks go to our women friends and colleagues with
whom we have discussed these matters over the past twenty years, and to Kath
Davey (now Kath McKay), Anne Edwards, Helen Marshall and Patricia Morrigan, the
members of Feminism In Social Theory (FIST) and to Bob Pease and Bob Fuller of
Men Against Sexual Assault for also participating in a readers' panel.
First
published 1991
by the Action Research Issues Association
(Incorporated)
4th
Floor Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 3000
c This
paper is copyright. We are a small
not-for-profit organisation and are dependent on income generated by sales from
the publications that we prepare.
We are committed to wide distribution and low cost prices.
Other
papers in this series:
What
is Participatory Action Research? by Yoland Wadsworth, ARIA: 1991
Now
publicly available in the internationally refereed Action Research
International online journal at
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/sawd/ari/ari-wadsworth.html
How
Can Professionals Help Groups Do Their Own Participatory Action Research? by
Yoland Wadsworth, ARIA: 1991
approx.
5000 words