Writing contradictions

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the difficulties that arise when a feminist social science research project with an emancipatory aim, collaborative style, and an empathic approach is conducted among women who reject feminism and discuss race in insensitive and intolerant ways. The research project involved long, unstructured interviews and participant observation with White, working-class women in a gender segregated occupation (clerical workers and secretaries). There were several dilemmas in "writing up" the research: the limited reciprocity between researcher and participants in the study, questions of power and knowledge involved in analysis, and the complexities of writing a coherent narrative that adequately captured the contradictory interpretations and consciousness revealed in this research. Moreover, these dilemmas were sharpened by the challenge to present this research to an academic audience without reinforcing negative stereotypes of White, working-class women.