Feminist Research Methodologies — A Separate Paradigm? Notes for a Debate

Abstract

This paper has three central components. One, it examines the basic tenets of feminist research methodologies — the commitment to making visible women's lived experiences, to gender and gender relations as socially constructed and historicially specific, to reflexivity and the inclusion of the researcher and the research process as researchable topics, and to the emancipation of women —and argues that they constitute feminist research methodologies as a separate paradigm. Two, by describing the methodological choices made for my study of Israeli daughters of Holocaust survivors, it examines the discontents of feminist research methodologies and how we can address them. Three, by asking why so few published studies by Irish feminist sociologists and Women's Studies scholars have adhered to feminist research methodologies, it hopes to launch a debate about feminist research methodologies in Ireland.