Dealing with Difficult Differences: Reflexivity and Social Class in Feminist Research

Abstract

This article explores the impact of difference within the research process. First, it looks at the difference my working-class history has made to the experience of conducting feminist research. Second, it examines how that class difference has affected both my relationships with the women that I inter-viewed and my reading of their accounts. Drawing on both my own and the women s stories of growing up working class, I have attempted to map out some of the psychological complexities that are invariably overlooked in academic accounts of either-the research process or working-class experiences of mother-ing and childhood. Finally, I have tried to pull out some of the threads still linking educated, working-class, feminist academics with their class backgrounds and explore the fragility and strength of those connections in the light of my own social trajectory.