Women in developing countries: Methodological and theoretical considerations

Abstract

This study explores some of the theoretical and methodological problems encountered by researchers studying women in developing countries. Based on research in the field in Iran the paper opens with a brief review of the literature describing criticism of quantitative and qualitative methods and of the feminist perspective that led to the questioning that revealed the gender bias in research. The main portion of the paper begins with a look at the limitations of quantitative data in the form of census data that fails to identify a large proportion of womens work in Iran and other developing countries especially since many women view their work as unproductive and in the form of structured interviews which in Iran must take place in womens residences in the presence of their husbands. Structured interviews fail to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of womens lives in Iran. This methodology also ignores differences from Western models of such basic activities as marriage mothering and labor market participation. Concepts presented in the literature which emphasize the centrality of Islam in womens lives but not its diversity and which present an orientalist bias and react to the impact of colonization are also inadequate for use in grasping the complexity of womens lives in Iran. An alternative approach was used therefore that combined various methods (participant observation informal guided interviews case studies focus group discussions and visual methods) to illuminate womens lives. The paper concludes by describing how each aspect of this alternate approach to data collection exposes the complexities of womens experiences.