Feminist Participatory Action Research Research Articles

Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Elite Athletics: “There’s a Lot of Work Still Yet To Be Done”

Several female athletes have recently challenged the long-standing assumption that pregnancy/parenthood (particularly motherhood) and participation in elite-level sport are mutually exclusive. These women’s actions have elicited change across the elite athletics industry and have sparked a need for further research to understand how elite athlete-parents perceive these shifts. We used feminist poststructuralist theory, feminist participatory action research, and semistructured interviews to explore the perspectives of 21 pregnant and parenting elite/international and world-class athletes (11 women and 10 men) on the developing degree of acceptance of parenthood in elite athletics. Through feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis, we identified that, despite considerable recent advancements, there is still a need for continued change in the degree to which pregnant/parenting elite athletes are accepted and supported within elite athletics.

Essential Ecosystem Area Policies as a Means to Promote Participatory and Inclusive Conservation in Forest Landscape Governance: Centering Perspectives of Marginalized Women in Taman Kili-Kili, Indonesia

This study analyses dimensions of participatory forest landscape governance of the Essential Ecosystem Area (EEA) of Taman Kili-Kili, Indonesia. The voices of marginalized communities, and especially women, are rarely incorporated into forest landscape governance and conservation policies. The recently established Indonesian EEA policy mandates a participatory approach, with explicit requirements to involve marginalized groups and gendered perspectives. However, on a practical level, policy formulation and application unfold in very different ways. Using a Postcolonial Feminist Participatory Action Research (PFPAR) approach, we center local communities' power relations in our analysis as a specific means for drawing out various intersectional relations to conservation areas. The study found that local communities around EEA Taman Kili-Kili have a clear interest in participating in inclusive mangrove forest management models as they not only have the knowledge and capacity, outcomes significantly affect their lives and livelihoods. Findings suggest that the activism of local communities, specifically in the form of various women's gatherings, is reshaping policy milestones and opening up pathways towards gender and ecological justice.

Community Service Perspectives on Climate Change and Social Justice in Western Australia

ABSTRACT Social workers increasingly recognise the relationship between social injustice and climate change, which is underpinned by oppressive systems of power such as colonialism, racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Climate change exacerbates existing structural inequities, with disproportionately negative impacts on marginalised populations. In their work across diverse fields of social work practice, community service organisations (CSOs) have an important frontline role in supporting communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In the state of Western Australia (WA), a group of CSO leaders and university researchers commenced a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) program about climate justice and community services. In the first FPAR cycle, they undertook a survey, interviews, and workshops with CSO workers to examine social justice impacts of climate change in WA. CSO workers generally self-reported a low understanding of social justice and climate change. They identified climate impacts across themes of health, economic injustices, discrimination and access, housing and displacement, and gendered injustices. The authors contend that as climate change intensifies, CSOs must embed climate justice in their operations and services so that they might adequately prepare for, and respond to, the social justice impacts of climate change. IMPLICATIONS Increased understanding of workers’ perspectives of the social justice impacts of climate change in Western Australia can identify knowledge gaps in the community service sector. Embedding a climate justice lens can assist CSO operations and programs to prepare for, and respond to, the social justice impacts of climate change.

Learning from feminist participatory action research: A framework for responsive and generative research practices with young people

Feminist participatory action researchers (FPAR) recognize transformative praxis as a political, relational, deeply felt and embodied experience that centers issues of power, participation, and relationality. This paper offers an in-depth exploration of FPAR praxis from a study conducted with young people who were learning to be activists in a youth-led organization in British Columbia. This work highlights the generative potential of creativity and art for embodied, affective, intellectual research practices. Specifically, I describe and analyze three research practices designed to generate meaning making: 1) critical reflexivity and interviewing as relational practice, 2) a loving creative embodied analytical practice, and 3) reflective and dialogical analytical practice. Findings provide insights for designing transformative research praxis that can catalyze a greater sense of personal and collective power. Implications of creative participatory methods for documenting and deepening the diverse meanings of experiences of activism, resistance, and community are addressed. I argue for demonstrate the value of FPAR praxis for sustaining social justice work through practices designed to generate spaces for people who are becoming activists to share about their experiences, grow their relationships, and make meaning together.

Women, Addictions, Mental Health, Dishonesty, and Crime Stigma: Solutions to Reduce the Social Harms of Stigma.

British drug policies could underserve women with treatment needs, and this paper provides evidence that communication through the words and actions of professionals across drug and alcohol services, health and mental health, social work and the criminal justice sector can leave women feeling stigmatised and failed. Women live with the stigma of 'the lying addict'; however, documents and courtroom statements provided by professionals can misrepresent women's experiences, which exacerbates social harm. Data are drawn from feminist participatory action research, where female lived experience experts worked alongside academics to implement a qualitative study using interviews and focus groups with women using treatment services (n = 28) and an online world café with professionals working with these women (n = 9) and further professionals providing support at lived experience data collection events (n = 5). This data set is cross-referenced with one-to-one and small-group interviews with professionals in the field (n = 17) conducted by a third-sector partner. Findings establish that stigma negatively impacts the identification of treatment needs and access to timely and appropriate service delivery. Social harms to women with addictions could be significantly reduced with timely, authentic, honest, gender-informed and trauma-informed practices for girls and women using drugs and alcohol to self-medicate from traumatic experiences.

Co-Developing a Radical Mental Health Doula Model of Support

Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) has the potential to create impactful research outcomes, challenge institutional hierarchies and disrupt conditions that oppress and marginalize women in the research process. This paper reflects on the application of FPAR as a methodology during the development of an innovative Radical Mental Health Doula (RMHD) framework and the accompanying training curriculum. Women and their experiences with mental health systems and services are at the centre of this project. Experts through their own experience, women co-researchers (WCRs) were instrumental in identifying problems and determining how to address gaps in what they recognized as an often cruel, fragmented and dehumanizing model of mental health care. The FPAR approach allowed us to question the roles of expert, researcher and subject. This enabled an exploration of how women’s voices and experience, which are traditionally silenced, can challenge hierarchical and patriarchal practices in mental health systems and research. Reflecting on the use of FPAR, through an analysis of data from consultation meetings with WCRs, we identified three key practices that led to the successful application of this methodology in the RMHD project. In this paper we highlight the voices of women co-researchers to examine 1. Relationship building, 2. Inquiry with women co-researchers and respect for lived experience, and 3. Holding space to share vulnerability and emotion in the FPAR process.

Bicycling for mutual aid: centering racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ cyclists in Toronto

ABSTRACT Within the context of a (post-)COVID-19 pandemic world, there is an urgent need to critically explore how bicycle-related activities may contribute to an environmentally sustainable and equitable world for vulnerable populations. In recent years, mutual aid projects have surged globally, with scholars pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as a key driver of communities being forced to respond to the unfolding social and environmental crises, alongside state abandonment. In this paper, we discuss how cycling has been taken up by communities disproportionately harmed by colonial systems. Using a decolonial feminist participatory action research approach, the authors collaborated with The Bike Brigade, a non-profit bicycle delivery organization that partners with mutual aid organizations. Using arts-based methods and semi-structured interviews, we draw on the perspectives of 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized cyclists who volunteer with The Bike Brigade. A key theme of the research was the unique way in which research colleagues used bicycles to participate in community care by embodying mutual aid values: community thriving, resource reallocation and solidarity. Thus, this paper puts forth mutual aid as a potential framework for understanding radical mobility practices to foster community care.

Women-led organisations leading from the front: Coordinating responses to gender-based violence in Somalia and South Sudan

abstract Responding to gender-based violence (GBV) in fragile and conflict affected states is highly complex and coordination is critical. Both South Sudan and Somalia have unique challenges in providing services. Despite women being disproportionately affected by GBV, there are many barriers to women-led organisations (WLOs) taking leadership roles. Through a feminist participatory action research project with Women for Change (WFC) in South Sudan and Active in Development Aid (ADA) in Somalia (supported by Trócaire, United Nations Population Fund and the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance), barriers to the participation of WLOs in leadership structures coordinating responses to GBV were identified and addressed, and a resource package was produced. WFC and ADA both went on a unique journey in asserting their leadership roles, developing their leadership skills, and raising the voices of WLOs. The impact of their leadership positions through the project had a knock-on effect, and both organisations have increased visibility and been able to insert women’s realities — including GBV — into other interventions. This article discusses the importance of women-led solutions addressing GBV in fragile and conflict-ridden states, and provides recommendations for increasing women’s voice, leadership and action.

Lost in Translation? Agency and Incommensurability in the Transnational Travelling of Discourses of Sexualized Harm

This article argues for incommensurability, incoherence, and difference as the grounds through which to think about sexualized harm and its redress. It seeks to remove the “me” from the “too”, and to instead consider the structures of white supremacy and neocolonial power that have facilitated white Western feminists’ ability to participate in shaping a hegemonic discourse of sexualized harm and its transnational travelling. The article traces the author’s personal genealogy of rights work in the context of shifts in international jurisprudence in relation to wartime sexualized violence. It looks back and reflects on an eight-year feminist participatory action research project that accompanied 54 Mayan women protagonists who survived a multiplicity of harm, including sexual violence, during Guatemala’s 36-year genocidal war. The project documented the protagonists’ engagement with transitional justice mechanisms, including a paradigmatic court case and a national reparations program, as part of their struggles for redress. The concept of “protagonism” is used to understand agency in the aftermath of genocidal violence as relational, co-constructed, and imbued with power. The meaning of sexualized harm is always “in-translation” between Western and Mayan onto-epistemological positionings, as Mayan women seek to suture land-body-territory in their multifaceted strategies for redress that engage but always exceed rights regimes.

Undocumented Bordering Practices: Protagonism and Spaces of Making

Abstract Borders are at the centre of everyday lives, often with gendered and violent outcomes exacerbating harm across space and time. The feminization of waiting is embedded in the power structures of borders. Yet, feminized waiting in the context of displacement can also be a necessary pre-condition for generating affective geographies of making, and transformative spaces of solidarity and contestation across borders. This paper draws on ethnographic and feminist participatory action research carried out in southern Mexico to document bordering practices ‘from below’, Undocumented Bordering Practices performed by women from Central America experiencing waiting in the Mexico–Guatemala borderlands. I expand the definitions of bordering and refugee protection by centring on women’s protagonism (self-authorship) and collective acts of making (art, food, and spaces of care) as they wait. I illustrate three processes of making while waiting: The making of a ‘mural-on-the-move’, a newsletter titled Breaking Barriers: When women migrate, life migrates, and intimate geopolitics of making and sharing food in borderlands.

Co-creating knowledge on bicycling: a decolonial feminist participatory action research approach to arts-based methods

ABSTRACT The colonising tendencies of Western research — in which Indigenous and racialised bodies are deliberately misrepresented — has justified the exploitation and violence towards these communities. Within the field of qualitative sport research, there is a need for research methodologies that relinquish power from the researcher, into the hands of the research communities . This paper aims to demonstrate the utility of a decolonial feminist participatory action research (PAR) approach to arts-based methods for sport research through an exploration of fieldwork with a Toronto-based bicycle organisation. A combination of data collection methods were used, including: 1) arts-based methods; 2) semi-structured interviews; and 3) reflexive journal notes. The results of this project demonstrated that a decolonial feminist PAR approach to arts-based methods can: 1) illuminate the non-human actors within art and bicycling; 2) help research colleagues critique systems of oppression; and 3) facilitate research colleague agency. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the importance of co-creating knowledge within sport scholarship to illuminate the diverse knowledges of those vulnerable to systemic oppression and erasure. This is a novel direction for challenging power relations within sport research and within sociological research more broadly.

The political practices of gender experts: repurposing women's empowerment

ABSTRACT Gender experts are increasingly employed across governments, multilateral donors, companies, and NGOs where they are defining a new profession and a new field of study, driving calls for research into the relationship between expertise and feminism. At the same time, the instrumentalization of the women's empowerment approach has prompted analysis of whether it can be reharnessed to its radical roots. By interviewing 25 gender experts, this article examines their political practices in navigating their work at a time when there is unprecedented support for gender equality, and yet interventions overwhelmingly focus on women's market inclusion. The article underscores the profound contradictions generated by the privatization of development, where most gender experts support increased private sector involvement but operate in a hostile environment and devote substantial labour to gender-capacity building. Based on the limited scope for re-radicalising women's empowerment, the article proposes advocating for feminist participatory action research as an alternative.

Reflections from an insider researcher ‘doing’ feminist participatory action research to co-produce a research agenda with British Pakistani women; a seldom heard group

Participation of community stakeholders in health research priority setting is an emerging trend. Despite this, the involvement of marginalised groups in research prioritisation is limited and where they are involved, sample sizes are small, where individuals are merely consulted with, rather than coproducing the research agenda. Without addressing power dynamics inherent in research prioritisation with marginalised groups, their engagement in the research process can be tokenistic and the resulting research agenda unreflective of their needs. This article, therefore, aims to generate knowledge on how feminist participatory action research was used to co-produce an obesity research agenda with British Pakistani women, a seldom heard population, living in deprived areas. The methodology enabled Pakistani women to be involved in all stages of the project, culminating in the co-production of an obesity research agenda that accurately reflects their unmet needs. Women’s engagement in the project led to their increased confidence, the formation of relationships that lasted beyond the research project, improvements to their lifestyles, and engagement in further research. Feminist participatory action research may be used by researchers as a guiding methodology due to its ability to improve women’s lives and develop research agendas for women’s health.

Troubling the Education = Employment = Empowerment Narrative: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Women in Uganda

This paper reports on stage four of a longitudinal study (2004) with women in Uganda, exploring the long-term relationship between post-primary education and empowerment. 13 of the 15 participants from the original study participated in this Feminist Participatory Action Research project and shared their understandings of how they understood the intersections of education and employment to be empowering, disempowering, and what stood in the way of their economic empowerment. Methods included semi-structured questionnaires and interviews, a two-day workshop, and a focus group discussion. A triangulation design (Cresswell 2008) and constructivist grounded theory approach were used for data analysis. Findings indicate the scope of economic empowerment was severely constrained by historic and extant economic, social, and cultural factors that continue to discriminate against and disempower girls and women. Historic and extant global and national systems and practises that are rooted in, and perpetuate gender-based inequalities, disempowerment, and exploitation need to undergo transformative change to provide women with authentic opportunities and freedom to achieve real empowerment (Cornwall & Rivas, 2015).

“Ain’t I a Woman?”: Feminist Participatory Action-Research with African Migrant Women Living in Spain

There is a growing trend towards a feminization of migration which calls for an urgent intersectional analysis in migration and integration research. Migrant women are exposed to numerous barriers that make difficult to participate in host communities due to the intersections between their gender, ethnicity, migratory status, etc. These barriers range from structural to daily discrimination in the shape of sexism and racism, particularly for women from regions further south of Africa. Undertaken in collaboration with a local NGO in Southern Spain, this study aims to approach African migrant women’s experiences and to promote agency and participation in host communities. It was framed in Feminist Participatory Action-Research (FPAR) based on photovoice. The participants (n = 15) generated and shared photo-narratives about their daily experiences during five sessions that were participatively analyzed, classified into four themes as follows: (1) migratory projects; (2) violence and discrimination; (3) health and social care; and (4) to be and resist as an African migrant woman. Photovoice was valued as a safe, non-hierarchical, and caring environment that promoted agency in participants and reflexivity in researchers. Our results highlight the importance and necessity on undertaking FPAR in collaboration with social organizations for emancipatory research praxis and put the emphasis on photovoice as a transformational method.

Feminist Evaluation Using Feminist Participatory Action Research: Guiding Principles and Practices

There is a lack of instructional literature on how to conduct a feminist evaluation to highlight and transform systemic issues in gendered and intersecting power relations. Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) enables a process for conducting community-driven, -led and -owned feminist evaluations that drive social justice actions. By undertaking a critical review of existing literature, this article presents guiding principles and practices in how to conduct a feminist evaluation using FPAR. These principles and practices provide a framework for those who are seeking an evidence base for transformative social justice action in communities, particularly those who are working with complexity in systems-change interventions with multiple stakeholders.

Woman-centred ethics: A feminist participatory action research

IntroductionContemporary ethical issues in the maternity system are nuanced, complex and layered. Medicalisation and the reported rise in incidence of mistreatment and birth trauma, has been described as unethical. Some authors suggest bioethical principles are limited in terms of guiding everyday care of pregnancy and birth. There is currently no known published research which explores what birthing people say is ethical. AimsThis study sought to explore women's experience of maternity care from an ethical perspective. MethodA Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) was conducted over three years, in two phases. A Community Action Research Group (CARG) was formed of nine participants, and data were captured from five focus groups. A further ten participants were recruited for individual in-depth interviews, the data corpus was combined, and thematic analysis was applied. All 19 participants had experienced a midwifery model of care in Western Australia. ResultsA unique ethical perspective was described by the participants. The central theme: ‘Radical desires: Individuals values and context’ placed the woman at the centre of the care, in determining what is ethical. Two categories captured the care experienced: Woman-centred ethics or Authoritarian ethics. A conceptual model Woman-centred ethics is offered to enhance everyday ethical midwifery care. DiscussionThe participants in this study perceived care as either ethical or unethical based on the quality of the relationship, the knowledge that was shared and the manner of the care given. The Woman-centred ethics model may be a starting point for moving the field forward in ethical discussion.

Taking Practical Steps: A Feminist Participatory Approach to Cocreating a Trauma- and Violence-Informed Physical Activity Program for Women.

Trauma- and violence-informed physical activity (TVIPA) is a feasible approach to improve access/engagement in physical activity for pregnant/parenting women with experiences of trauma. Through feminist participatory action research, 56 semistructured interviews were completed to understand TVIPA. Four themes were identified: (1) "I have to be on edge": Trauma and violence pervade women's lives, (2) "It should be mandatory that you feel safe": Emotional safety is essential, (3) "The opportunity to step up and be decision-makers and leaders": Choice, collaboration, and connection create safety, and (4) "It's a good start for healing," strengths-based and capacity building foster individual and community growth.

Youth, Gender and Climate Resilience: Voices of Adolescent and Young Women in Southern Africa

In contrast to the dominant ‘vulnerability narrative’ applied to studies of gender, age, and other intersectional characteristics in determining differentiated impacts of climate change, there is growing attention to the agency and voices of young people in the context of their development futures in a changing climate. This paper draws on Feminist Participatory Action Research undertaken by adolescent girls in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Centred on access to education, the findings prompt a reframing of youth agency and empowerment beyond instrumental concerns to integrate intrinsic factors that include self-fulfilment, recognition from others, status, and self-resilience. The research demonstrates how young people’s enquiry can help to surface the underlying structures of inequality shaping both their gendered experience of climate change and the response options available. Tackling structural issues may be beyond the conventional scope of climate change projects and policy, but gender and youth concerns require more than incremental changes. Rather, harnessing opportunities from low-carbon and climate-resilient futures requires understanding and tackling structural drivers of gender inequality that influence development opportunities for young people.

Navigating midwifery solidarity: A feminist participatory action research framework

BackgroundA core aspect of midwifery philosophy is the optimisation of normal physiology; however, this has been challenged as a radical idea in the medicalisation of birth. Research has demonstrated the benefits of midwifery in improving outcomes for both mothers and babies. The understanding of midwifery benefits fails to reach wider sociocultural contexts as births becomes more medicalised. Midwifery research requires an action arm, to help translate theory to practice and mobilise midwives in solidarity with women towards action and change. AimThe aim of this article is to describe a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) by establishing the philosophical underpinnings, theory and methodology with an exemplar. MethodsFPAR has two distinct yet intertwined parts, a research arm and an action arm. The study was conducted using FPAR, and collaboration with nine women, who led transformative action within their community. The exemplar details the use of the FPAR framework. FindingsA FPAR framework was developed through this research to guide researchers aiming to use the FPAR design. The framework details four steps: 1. Create, 2. Collaborate, 3. Consider, and 4. Change. The iterative FPAR cycles were shown in this study to centre women in the research and guide the community research group towards transformative action. ConclusionFPAR is shown in this project to assist midwifery researchers to realise solidarity and provides support for other midwifery researchers in applying feminist theory and participatory methodologies to bring about transformation within their research.