Feminist women wanted for PhD research.

[CarlyGuest]

Hi Everyone,

I am a PhD student in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London

I am looking for women aged between 18 and 35 to take part in a study of women?s feminist identities.

As a participant in this study, you would be asked to take part in an interview about how you came to see yourself as a feminist and what being feminist means to you. This will involve talking about personal photos and images that say something about your feminism.

Your participation would involve one interview lasting approximately between one and two hours.

If you are interested in taking part in this study, or would like further information please contact me (Carly Guest) Email: [email protected]

This study has received ethical approval from the Birkbeck College School of Social Science, History and Philosophy Ethics Committee.

Thanks!

Carly

Look, for all you know she wants people in that age group because she has already done a HUGE amount of research on older women and wants to look at this group for comparison.

I have done research on women under 35 before because there is simply no need for anything else, because it has all been done before.

I am just annoyed with all the me, me, me. Its not very sisterly.

I have a really sexy sideways look, with a knowing smirk and smouldering eyes behind the gigs/swept fringe

if I don't open my mouth too wide, you can't see the gaps in my dentures either

I am just taking the piss, tbh

Because I get annoyed with the way that women over 40 become invisible. Now that is "unsisterly" when reinforced by other women

oops, poor use of italics

Are we doing it wrong again?

Actually, I'd be interested in that research because it seems to me that claiming to be a feminist is rife in younger women but backed up with zero foundation at all when pushed for their reasoning even a tiny bit. Along with spouting some, frankly incredible, mysogynistic viewpoints.

"Landon Jones, who coined the term "baby boomer" in his book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, defined the span of the baby-boom generation as extending from 1946 to 1964" (from the hallowed halls of Wikipedia)

I am not a baby boomer, by definition

< can sleep easy tonight >

I think, given the context of ageism, it would have been reasonable for OP to explain why she only wants to talk to younger women.

sorry OP I'm too old as well; I do know lots of younger feminists but would need to know more about the theoretical viewpoint you are coming from and what you are hoping to get out of the research before I can put you in touch with them, what with feminism being all about political activism for me and me not wishing therefore to undermine the aims of that activism. (Or to put it another way I suppose, I would need to trust you, and I'm not yet sure I do.)

Don't quite see what the problem is with that list of research interests ...

What list of research interests? She has said nothing about what the research is for, what links she is trying to establish, hypotheses she is trying to prove/disprove, in fact anything about where her interests or the interests of her research lie.

I don't know if that is normal within academic reasearch to give participants minimal amount of information (not being an academic myself). I could see some advantage to it - in order not to sway opinion or to limit bias towards participants who are strongly in favour/against the research.

Still not getting the me me me thing Hannah. Or the sense of entitlement or what we have supposedly "taken".

the one Dittany pasted from her department, rather from Carly herself.

As D said, Carly may in fact be the last radfem standing at Birkbeck

rather than from Carly herself I mean

Ahh didn't look at those links! [slinks away quietly]

[comes back having read]

Nope still agree with Dittany!

How can it be ageism to have a cut-off of 35? It's not a job: it's a research project.

You shape your research based on what you are interested in.

There are any number of reasons why the cut-off should be 18-35. (Or, indeed, 15-25. Or 25-40. Or 12-85). And in a PhD thesis she will have to justify them, and defend them, to her (presumably feminist) scholarly peers and examiners.

and you think that factors like ageism (or in other cases racism and sexism) have no effect at all on determining research agendas BelfastBloke? Of course they do - why would researchers be any more free from these things than anyone else?

of course there are lots of possible reasons for it but given that as women of a certain age we are fairly used to ageism in other situations, wanting to check first that it wasn't what was behind this one is not unreasonable.

"(not to ignore Mumsnetters in their 50s but as far as I know most Mumsnetters are 20s, 30s and 40s)"

Ah, thanks!

Seeing as more and more women are delaying childbirth for longer and longer, due to career/study/travel/financial and-or emotional situation/evt suitable partner etc, I don't see it as "odd" that I became a mother at 36
Hey! I know women who had their first in their 40's!

Is the phd actually related to burlesque or is the request she made just posted on that site?

Ayerobot There are young feminists out there who don't think objectification is empowering! I'm one of them. I had already been approached about this and had said yes. I would be interested to know more before actually participating so Carly, if you're around, please engage.

Sorry, msrisotto, I should have put a "some" in there. I would include my younger self in my description too.

I think that it would be good if Carly provided a bit more context and answered all these questions about the age limits.

I think people are being a little bit unfair. I do feminst research too, and we often have age limits. We studied 18-30 year olds for a study of transitions to adulthood, and then 25-40 year olds for a study of transitions to parenthood. Not because noone can be a parent outside that age group, but because we needed a way of systematically comparing across age groups and generations and across various countries. Without limits you can't compare your data, and you want it to fit into a wider framework of knowledge.

And we would like to study older workers in transition to retirement too, we want to do right across the life course, but as it happens the funders are often more interested in youth.

Not that I would ever study burlesque, myself...

fennel - quite right, and your age limits are imposed by the research topics themselves.

just curious how/why feminism has an age limit though, in this context. it isn't apparent why those over 35 can't provide some photos and talk about the development of their feminist consciousness...

but i think you may have inadvertently hit the nail on the head with funding.

what's the betting this has been funded specifically to target young women - with the potential objective of reigniting a feminist interest in a demographic that may see it as largely irrelevant to their lives?

you only have to read the mn boards to realise that's actually not a bad way to spend yer money...

so, on balance, if tis so, tis so. and i no longer have a huge problem with it.

"I have done research on women under 35 before because there is simply no need for anything else, because it has all been done before". Okay people who are over 35 off you go, you have nothing to becuase its all been done before ... WTF......want to talk about me, me, me???