Critical Feminist Methodologies Research Articles

Manifestations of neoliberal feminism in U.S. teacher lactation behaviours

ABSTRACT This study investigates the material-discursive contexts available for lactation amongst U.S. teachers who wish to continue nursing [a] child(ren) upon returning full-time to the classroom. Using critical feminist methodologies, we interviewed teacher-parents who chose to lactate or nurse their infants while at school. The study suggests that schools in the United States might be rife with neo-patriarchy that is highly oppressive to teacher-parents. Further, we found that the few discursive strategies available to lactating teacher-parents to navigate a tenuous work/life balance tend to be largely rooted in the highly individualized, responsibilised discourse of neoliberal feminism that is woefully inadequate to pose any serious challenge to the entrenched neo-patriarchy in schools.

Exploring feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis as methodologies in critical nursing research.

This paper explores two critical feminist methodologies for nursing research: feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis. The aim was to appreciate varied methodological approaches available for nurses to understand complexities in healthcare environments, above and beyond socially normative ways of knowing. Discursive paper. Published articles from nursing databases (CINAHL and ProQuest; no date restrictions) and interdisciplinary databases (Women's Studies International, Sociological Abstracts and Ovid MEDLINE; publication dates between 2017 and 2022). A discursive paper exploring and critically synthesizing the literature on feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how each methodological approach can be used in nursing. The findings of this discursive paper suggest there is an opportunity to draw on interdisciplinary studies for creative insights into how these methodologies may be helpful for nurses' scholarship and programmes of research. Although few nursing studies explicitly name a feminist political economy or feminist critical discourse analysis approach, several studies apply principles of these methodological approaches. There is an opportunity for these methodologies to be applied within the same project when there is a fit between the research questions and aims of both methodologies (studies where notions of gender and power are considered central and there are potential insights from exploring social progress, structures and the material, along with the social relations of discourses). Feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis offer novel options for methodological analyses. Application of these methodologies may benefit critical nursing scholars looking for diverse critical methodological avenues to explore and to broaden nursing's methodological toolbox towards meeting social justice aims. No patient or public contribution.

Interprofessional team trust in maternity services: a service evaluation

Background/Aims A climate of trust in maternity may improve the experiences of staff and women accessing maternity services. The aim of this study was to explore how a climate of trust was promoted through creation of a regular virtual maternity multidisciplinary forum, known as a maternal medicine huddle, during the COVID-19 pandemic and what influence this had on the organisational culture of a local maternity system and the experiences of women receiving maternity care. Methods Through a critical feminist methodology, six participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Interviews were conducted through Miscrosoft Teams, with the six participants representing each of the six trusts in a selected local maternity and neonatal system. Results Developing trust for teamwork is valued, while at the same time interprofessional and interorganisation challenges are highlighted that can impact workplace culture. Conclusions The huddles have built a climate of trust, working to deliver safe, equitable care for those using maternity services and a supportive learning environment for those providing it.

“Critical feminist justpeace”: a grounded theory approach to Women, Peace and Security

ABSTRACT More than 20 years after the landmark achievement of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, feminist scholars and activists are debating the conditions in which peacebuilders should employ the agenda and those in which they should pursue alternatives. This article argues that the conflict and peacebuilding in Manipur, a state in Northeast India, is ripe for creative thinking beyond WPS. India refuses to acknowledge legally this intractable, low-intensity armed conflict, barring international and humanitarian actors from entry. Moreover, the WPS agenda has failed to reach from New Delhi into the marginalized Northeast region, where plentiful forms of direct and structural violence persist. Thus, rather than rallying around the WPS agenda for this case, feminist scholars and activists should find other ways to support longstanding women’s peacebuilding initiatives. Using Ackerly’s critical feminist methodology, I synthesize inductive insights from women’s peacebuilding praxis and apply them to Lederach’s contextual and relational approach to conflict transformation, revising it to incorporate the gendered concerns of women building peace across ethnic and religious differences. The result is a grounded normative theory called “critical feminist justpeace,” an alternative to the WPS approach.

Investigating disembodied university crisis communications during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us many weaknesses in crisis communication, especially at universities where campus communities are often rendered as disembodied monoliths. In this article, we select a case example from our own institution to show that when bodies are erased from university crisis communication, power imbalances are reinscribed that render campus community members powerless. Using a critical feminist methodology, we end with several suggestions for more inclusive embodied institutional crisis messaging.

The Men Need to Be Involved: A Critical Frame Analysis of Gender+ Equity Narratives

We apply a critical feminist methodology, Critical Frame Analysis (CFA), to discourses regarding gender+ equity efforts undertaken at our university in order to reveal frames that have mobilized—and/or have the potential to mobilize—institutional change for gender+ equity. After briefly considering consequential cultural shifts and changes in cultural frames regarding men’s roles in gender+ (in)equity, we apply a rhetorical/critical approach to analyze narratives culled from two decades of archival data, along with present-day perspectives provided by the coauthors and four interviewees. Our analysis yielded five frames: Women’s Representation, Institutions Create (In)Equity, Men as Allies, All Hands On Deck, and Intersectional Gender+. Finally, we compared our findings with a typology of narrative frames to gauge effectiveness of previous and future gender+ equity efforts. Our university has traversed some measurable cultural distance on the journey to gender+ equity, yet stable and intersectional manifestations of gender+ justice remain ahead of us.

We exist, play sports, and will persist: everyday lives of Palestinian sportswomen through the lens of the ‘politics of invisibility’

From Nakba to the present, Palestinian women have either been invisibilized by the denial of their existence, homeland, and culture or visibilized through the lens of politics, in which case they are portrayed as backward, victims, and/or terrorists. This paper shines light into the everyday lives of Palestinian young women playing sport in the context of a heavily politicized, militarized, and restrictive colonial occupation. Based on fieldwork and interviews carried out with Palestinian sportswomen living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories during the period of 2014-2015, this paper examines Palestinian sportswomen’s responses to the question-what is the role and meaning of sport in your life? By interpreting sportswomen’s responses through Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s critical feminist methodology on the ‘politics of invisibility’, this paper draws attention to the (in)visible hardships Palestinian women encounter in their everyday sporting lives and how the women in this study mobilize sport to counter the personal and societal impacts of living under occupation.

Presencias y ausencias sobre género y feminismos en las publicaciones de trabajo social

Revisión sistematizada que indaga en artículos publicados entre 2014 y 2019, respecto de la relación entre género, feminismos y trabajo social, en revistas de especialidad en Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Brasil y España. Los resultados demuestran acercamientos teórico-conceptuales, metodológicos y principales discusiones que desde el trabajo social se exponen para establecer las presencias y ausencias de género y feminismos en la literatura especializada de la disciplina. Los resultados permiten seguir las pistas de un trabajo social feminista agenciado desde los márgenes, cuyas tramas concluyentes se sitúan en la responsabilidad ética-política acuerpada, la formación en metodologías críticas feministas, la trascendencia de la perspectiva de género y el (re)posicionamiento del quehacer disciplinar en/con actoras/es y movimientos sociales en pluralidad y diversidad de luchas y resistencias.

Each Female Fan Has Her Own Story

This article advocates autoethnography as a critical feminist methodology for using personal testimony to investigate women’s experience and performance of fandom The article’s centerpiece is an analysis of the personal testimonies of three women—researcher-fans of different ages—of a fan-owned club Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem. In addition to revealing women’s gendered-based experiences and the different ways in which women acquire and perform fandom, their personal stories prove valuable for exposing the gendered regime of the football field. Moreover, they reveal how women who are not fluent in the hegemonic language of fandom make their way in the fandom field as they seek their own voice and position in it. The analysis suggests that women’s participation can disrupt the hegemonic masculinity of fandom and challenge its established boundaries, thereby problematizing accepted definitions of the authentic fan.

“Bringing Your Whole Self to Research”

Despite advancements, there remains relatively little research about how researchers navigate their bodies and emotions in the context of field research. Perhaps because it represents a threat to ideas about objective or value-free research, qualitative researchers may receive the least amount of practical training about how their bodies and emotions matter in the field. The prevailing assumption is that researchers will eventually find their way or organically develop the pivotal relationships that they need to conduct their work. This uncertainty can be a tremendous source of anxiety for researchers new to the field and even for those seasoned researchers initiating new projects. In this article, I explore the factors that shape the meanings that research participants attach to researchers’ bodies and emotions and, similarly, how researchers’ emotions are implicated in their research. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory and critical feminist methodologies, I use specific examples from my ethnographic research in Brazil to highlight the complex and contradictory ways that researchers’ bodies and emotions are perceived by potential research participants and can be managed in order to enhance ethnographic research. Ultimately, this presentation is intended to explore the challenges and possibilities created when researchers marshal their bodies and emotions to bring their whole self to research.

Enhancing our understanding of emancipatory nursing: a reflection on the use of critical feminist methodologies.

The aim of this analysis is to contribute to an understanding of emancipatory nursing in the context of higher education. Engagement with formative studies that used critical feminist methodologies led to my research focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) health in my academic research program. Dimensions of emancipatory nursing include reflexivity, transformative learning, interdisciplinarity, praxis, and situated privilege. Several critical feminist methodologies are addressed: feminist ethnography, community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), and comparative life history. Commonalities across methodologies illustrate the potential for emancipatory outcomes/goals.

Deconstructing clinical pathways: mapping the landscape of health care.

Grounded in a critical feminist methodology, this article undertakes a deconstructive discourse analysis of a newly emergent discourse within nursing care management, "clinical pathways." Using a Foucaultian approach to deconstructive discourse analysis, the power relations inherent in the "clinical pathways" discourse are identified and the underlying philosophical assumptions informing the discourse are explored. The metaphors of "map" and "landscape" are employed to examine the power relations within the discourse of "clinical pathways." Finally, an alternative, praxis-based approach to transforming the discourse of "clinical pathways" from a focus of social control to one of situated engagement and community is proposed.

Women in the Field: Critical Feminist Methodologies and Theoretical Perspectives∗

Feminist scholars have traditionally emphasized the importance of incorporating “the everyday” worlds of women into the historically masculinist theoretical and empirical foundations of the social sciences. Such emphases have commonly resulted in smaller-scale research projects and more interactive kinds of research methods and methodologies. Feminist geographers have uniquely contributed to the body of feminist scholarship through drawing out the importance of place in everyday constructions of gender and, more recently, sexuality. Critical field-based research has therefore from the beginning been the mainstay of subdisciplinary research. Like the discipline as a whole, however, little explicit attention has been given in publications or pedagogically to the politics of fieldwork (including how a “field” is defined and the politics involved in choosing and working in a particular “field”) or the politics of representation (which includes considerations of the partiality of knowledge and how and to whom we represent our work, ourselves and others in various kinds of texts). These “Opening Remarks” show how these issues are addressed in the papers that follow and how feminist geography has much to contribute to critical analyses of global and multinational processes, including patriarchy, capitalism, and racism.