Feminist Methodology

Abstract

Feminist methodology is the approach to research that has been developed in response to concerns by feminist scholars about the limits of traditional methodology to capture the experiences of women and others who have been marginalized in academic research. Feminist methodology includes a wide range of methods, approaches, and research strategies. Beginning in the early 1970s, feminist scholars critiqued positivist scientific methods that reduced lived experiences to a series of disconnected variables that did not do justice to the complexities of social life. Feminists were also among the first scholars to highlight the marginalization of women of color in academic research and to offer research strategies that would counter this trend within academia (Baca Zinn 1979; Collins 1990). Feminist scholars also stress the importance of intersectional analysis, an approach that highlights the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality in examining women's lives (Crenshaw 1993). Some of the earliest writing on feminist methodology emphasized the connection between “feminist consciousness and feminist research,” which is the subtitle of a 1983 edited collection by Stanley and Wise. Over the years, feminist methodology has developed a very broad vision of research practice that can be used to study a wide range of topics, to analyze both men's and women's lives, and to explore both local and transnational or global processes.