Collaboration for Improving Social Work Practice: The Promise of Feminist Participatory Action Research

Abstract

Feminist research and participatory action research (PAR) share the belief that research should directly serve social justice aims and work to alleviate suffering of marginalized and oppressed people. This article presents the results of a unique feminist PAR (FPAR) approach to designing and implementing an evaluation of an intervention with women who have used violence. The site of our analysis is the steering committee that oversaw this work and the extent to which members adhered to FPAR principles. Over the two decades since feminist critiques of PAR began to emerge, new discourses of collaboration have appeared. As researchers, we must be alert to FPAR discourses that mask ongoing hierarchies. Our findings suggest that, while reflexivity and genuine commitment to collaboration are fundamental to enacting FPAR principles, social workers nevertheless face real challenges confronting structural barriers that impede anti-oppression goals. This study highlights the challenges of adhering faithfully to feminist participatory principles in real-life settings and the need for future research to examine the effectiveness of FPAR processes in achieving authentic collaboration among committee members who are chosen to represent disparate perspectives and are backed by vastly different levels of social and institutional power.