Ethical responsibility in feminist research: challenging ourselves to do activist research with women in poverty

Abstract

For those who seek to conduct qualitative research that makes a positive difference in the lives of women in poverty, feminist research methodologies offer the most productive guide. Researchers must partner with those we study and foreground participants’ own perceptions of their challenges, while analyzing structural discrimination and identifying ‘sites of possibilities’ to leverage social and policy change. Attempting to follow all the recommendations of feminist methodologists can, however, overwhelm researchers with desirable but difficult ethical demands. Bloom and Sawin examine their ethnographic projects relative to the recommendations of key feminist methodologists, identifying patterns of success and failure. We then draw on Walker’s feminist model of ‘nongeneric accountability’ to argue that treating feminist methodologists’ models as inflexible rules reinscribes patriarchal ethics. It is both more effective for social change and more feminist to negotiate research commitments with our research participants and colleagues.