Research narrative 3

Abstract

Amanda has researched in the area of social justice and schooling for two decades. Her feminist sensibilities have led her to explore the inequities experienced by marginalized girls and women. These experiences draw attention to the ways in which gender injustices are compounded by experiences of racial and religious oppression. In this chapter, Amanda explores the ongoing and perhaps unresolvable ethical dilemmas associated with her research encounters with Muslim women and girls. The chapter articulates a feminist approach to ethical research. It provides an account of Amanda's research positionality and in particular her wrestling with how her feminist and atheist subjectivities inform her research with Muslim girls and women. To illustrate some of the ethical dilemmas of doing research with marginalized communities, Amanda examines some of the ethical processes and challenges associated with a recent project she led in collaboration with a small Australian-based community organization. The project assisted the organization to conduct its own research into the efficacy of one of its programmes designed to support young Muslim women's public action for human rights. This process involved members of the organization gathering their own data to ascertain the effectiveness of their programme and working with university researchers to interpret and generate writing from these data. The chapter considers the ethical processes and challenges of this project in light of key feminist approaches to ethical research.