Is it possible for men to carry out valid feminist research?

Yes MB it is a huge problem. I saw a presentation not so long ago on a piece of research that identified that most female professors were divorced and without children, whilst most male professors had a wife and children. So not an easy life for women.

Not that I'm wanting to worry you of course

WW you obviously missed the sentence prior to the one you quoted where I said all researchers need to grapple with these issues.

AlwaysWild - that is a problem in some/many research teams. Not enough women researchers - although we had a diverse group of nationalities we only had 20% women in our quite small team.

I hope to be rejoining academic life soon (after a ten year break) so it will be interesting to see how things have changed. My DW is an academic (part time) and she is applying for research funding under a special programme aimed at increasing the amount of funding that female researchers get - which is another major problem.

"Of course being a man writing feminist research would have to consider what this means and make judgements on their research accordingly. None of this is the least bit radical."

Granted, but equally a woman writing feminist research needs to take into consideration her own bias and make judgements accordingly.

Morebeta I do hope you are equally concerned about making sure all the many many many all male research teams bring in a woman so they don't engage in group think?

What sgm said. Anyone who thinks there is such a thing as unbiased research really needs to read any book on research written post the 1960s.

Discussions of who it is and isn't appropriate for research to be carried out by isn't exclusive to feminist research and is hardly a radical notion. All researchers have to grapple with their role in the process and make decisions accordingly. Of course being a man writing feminist research would have to consider what this means and make judgements on their research accordingly. None of this is the least bit radical.

Any intelligent well-trained person should be capable of carrying out unbiased research, no matter what their personal experience.

I think the idea that one needs personal anecdote experience in order to be qualified to work in a certain field is stronger in some fields than others - e.g. some people thinking only women (or in extremer opinions only mothers) can be good midwives, whilst nobody thinks that a good oncologist needs to have had cancer themselves.

I find it quite worrisome if research in any field would be rejected out of hand simply based on the researcher's gender. Also if only research that confirms ideas borne out of a certain philosophical stance is regarded as valid research, that actually turns the purpose of doing research on its head.

Absolutely, which is why my follow up post having read the article said that the writer needs to read a couple of basic texts. Any researcher can introduce bias. A middle class woman from a naice two parent upbringing and university education interviewing a homeless single mother who left state Ed at 14 would have a number of obstacles to get over before being certain that shebwasn't introducing bias in either her questioning or her evaluation of the responses.

in my very limited and humble opinion, decent researchers will take steps to minimize this perfectly ordinary bias (whether due to growing up with a penis or a roof over your head) and be able to assess the effects of the bias in both the research design, data collection, and interpretation, and account for it. but it does mean being v honest about yourself, before you try and focus on other people. Which isn't always pretty.

I have a feeling that feminist research has an inherent bias in that it generally carried out by women and generally with female subjects (please feel free to correct me).

I don't know how much feminist research focuses on men as subjects but it seems to me that male researchers would bring a diversification of viewpoint in a research team.

In my own research team we had a historian, a philosopher, an economist a geologist and statistician. We all were interested in the same topic but had different approaches and points of view and hopefully both stimulated each other as well as questioned our personal biases.

There is a real danger of 'Group Think' in all research fields.

I guess reporting bias is one of the biggest problems in sociological research and there might be an argument be made that the gender of the researcher might impact on the data collection.

But if a man can't do the write-up/data interpretation objectively due to ingrained bias, then a woman can't do it either - as a woman would have a similar bias problem. So the suggestion that she'd be better/more objective is risible. Actually letting your own experiences influence the interpretation of your research is exactly what you want to avoid

Good research should try and adjust for bias or try and find ways of precluding it from colouring the interpretation, hence e.g. double blind randomised controlled trials being the gold standard in medical research. I guess it's not as easy if at all possible to blind studies in any social sciences.

outofbody "So if a male researcher is directing his participants, that leads to problems." - But wouldn't the same be true if a female researcher directed her participant?

I hadn't read the article btw. I've flicked through it now, and think the writer just needs to read some basic field methods texts which will answer half of the ramblings quite satisfactorily. It's perpetrating longstanding issues as gendered (presumably purposefully) which is oversimplifying in the extreme. Meh.

It really boils down to power, doesn't it? One of the main tenets of feminist research is that the researched maintain a more equal power relation to the researcher than that usually seen - so the researched can shift the focus, rather than it being dictated by the researcher, if it seems pertinent to the discussion

So if a male researcher is directing his participants, that leads to problems.

There are also an awful lot of academics who believe that purist feminist research is only by women, with female participants, about female subjects, so of course the male researcher would automatically rule that the research is not feminist in nature with no further discussion.

I'm really just bookmarking as this is a pet interest of mine . I'm currently writing up a student project where I'm attempting to argue that we carried out feminist research despite one of the researchers being male and the subject (although gender and very much minority focused) was not in fact concerning natal females entirely. Or if not successfully arguing that the research was 'feminist' then claiming it followed the tenets of feminist research, and that this is advisable when dealing with all minority groups and sensitive subjects... Which doesn't seem anywhere near as controversial...

I can see a difficulty in asking the right questions.

If you're not aware of what the actual lived experience of women is (because women tend not to tell men everything and our experience isn't usually accurately or often portrayed in the wider media), how do you know what questions to ask? Research is as much about asking the right questions, as getting insightful answers.

But I'm not an academic so know FA about it.

It would probably useful for somebody with a background in anthropology to answer the questions raised on the thread. There is a lot in research designs for anthropology about the behaviour of the researcher and how they interact with the people who are being studied and this informs the methodology. That could be applied to a lot of research situations within the context of our society.

If you are a career academic working in a university your absolute goal is to get published in the very highest ranked journals. It affects your future promotion and the kind of institutions that might wish to recruit you.

all xposts!

I didn't read the piece.

I can understand that a man might have trouble collecting data about things like rape. Or accessing communities where women aren't allowed to talk to men they are not related to. Or discussing FGM. Or first sexual experiences with a view to understanding about whether coercion is common. That type of stuff I can see a difficulty in collecting data.

Agent - x-posted with your last post.

One point I would fully agree with is this:

"In the beginning, respondents were curious to know the purpose of the study and the benefits they will be getting by giving interviews which was followed by question in some cases on author?s sex. As they were of the opinion that it is generally the woman who conducts research on women. It can be said that the biggest challenge males? face is in the rapport building with the respondents and once it is built then the process of research is smooth till any personal question specifically related to sexual behavior is posed."

It is perfectly understandable that in a culture where women are not used to being alone with a strange man or where the subjects may have been abused by men, a male researcher may face significant difficulties in executing research that involves face-to-face interviews. It is highly likely his sex would affect the answers the women gave. This kind of inadvertent potential bias is one that all social science researchers are well aware of and the data collection process might have to be done by anonymous questionnaire or by female research assistants in those cases.

Agent - usually, funding is allocated in broad thematic areas by research funding bodies. Researchers then make proposals and these are selected by an appraising group.

Once the researcher has the money there is no dictation of what papers must be written or where they must be published. The papers are typically not submitted to the funding body for approval before publication either.