Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science
Brooke Ackerly
and
Jacqui True
Chapter 4
Question-Driven Research:
Formulating a Good Question
Introduction
In Chapter three we argued that you should always return to your original research question when you encounter unexpected deliberative moments where the choice of how to proceed is a difficult one. Your research question is the first principle of your research project: it is what orients and sustains it, and it is what makes it both compelling to do research and to learn about others’ research.
Having made clear the background theory and processes that affect empir- ical research in the first three chapters, in this chapter we begin our guide through the more visible stages of research, starting with the research ques- tion or puzzle and making explicit use of a feminist research ethic. This stage of the research process corresponds to the first part of the research presen- tation, dissertation/funding proposal, or publication. In its final form, the research question will be stated in one or two sentences, while the puzzle that it summarizes will be formulated in a paragraph – one compelling paragraph that draws the reader or audience into the world of your research.
The founding step in the research process is deciding on a research ques- tion. Even though the research question may change during the research process, the determining of the research question is an important (if recur- ring) starting point. In deciding her question, the feminist-informed researcher is guided by a feminist research ethic, and the attentiveness to power, to boundaries, to relationships and our situatedness as researchers that it demands. Putting this ethic into practice leads her to consider the importance of research questions whose answers have the potential to make visible the invisible, to give voice to the voiceless, to make central analyses
that are marginalized or neglected by mainstream lines of inquiry, and to bring to our attention processes and institutions that have been absent in the mainstream of our disciplines. By its very definition, a feminist research question is often “cutting edge.”
Part of learning to ask a good feminist-informed question is being well versed in our field(s) and taking account of the silences and neglected topics within it, relative to what we observe in the world around us. In this chapter we discuss and illustrate how feminist scholars craft their research questions dialogically with their subject-participants or by drawing on women’s and men’s experiences and their gender analysis of their subject or field and on existing feminist and non-feminist scholarship in related fields. We show that feminists make convincing arguments about the relevance and importance of their research questions to central questions and pervading problems in their political and social science fields by situating their scholarship in relation to other pursuits within their field, other pursuits of related questions in other fields (including other feminist pursuits), and the concerns of affected actors. The multidisciplinarity of feminist research does not exempt its author from building on research, including non-feminist research that has already been done. Rather feminist transdisciplinarity (see Key Concept 1.7) requires us to situate our work broadly in relation to our subfield, our field, other feminist inquiry, policy relevance, and activist concerns. In so doing we explore the boundaries and power dynamics of research. A feminist research ethic is a guiding tool in developing a research question that is puzzling and impor- tant.
What is a Great Question?
Most importantly, I have learned that you have to ask important and interesting questions. That is the hardest thing to do and the hardest thing to teach. We can teach paradigms, analytical perspectives, and methods by taking them off the professional shelf and transporting them to the classroom. What we cannot teach so readily is how to ask impor- tant and interesting questions (Evans et al. 1996: 11).
Both feminist and non-feminist researchers struggle to ask good research questions – whether they are “what,” “why,” or “how” questions. Our research questions are at the heart of successful research enterprises; they animate our research, reminding us of what we are doing in our research and why, especially at those times when the way ahead seems less than straight- forward, when we confront expected and unexpected challenges and dilem- mas. Both of us have always found it assuring to know that “the river runs muddy before it runs clear” and to be able to return for clarification to the
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research question that got us started along our way. Thus, we believe it is crucial to spend quality time developing and honing your research question or problem and stating it in such a way that its meaning is clear to both you and others.
Peter Katzenstein suggests in the epigraph above that our research should be driven by important and interesting questions and puzzles rather than by particular methods or paradigmatic concerns specific to a particular theoret- ical perspective or discipline. Indeed, Katzenstein and Sil (2008) argue that paradigm-oriented research can blinker our vision and lead us to take for granted some of the most interesting and important questions that lie around us and that require illumination or explanation. In the field of international relations, for example, the dominant realist paradigm did not see or analyze the problems of dissent and the abrogation of human rights in Eastern Europe that gave rise to local civil society struggles for freedom as significant for understanding change and continuity in international relations. Focused instead on the superpower relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States they completely overlooked the decaying of power within the states and societies of the East Bloc that led to the toppling of communist regimes, the break-up of the Soviet Union itself and the end of that bipolar international system.
Likewise, many of the dominant paradigms in political and social science have assumed gender injustice and women’s absence from their fields as background conditions or part of the way the world “is” and not something to be problematized or explained through research. In response, much femi- nist work in the political and social sciences has been devoted to unmasking concealed social and political phenomena and making compelling arguments based on research evidence for why these phenomena should be considered problems and questions to be addressed – and not only by researchers but by all of society at large.
Feminist research is both strongly question-oriented and problem focused. Political theorist Ian Shapiro advocates a question-driven approach to research which is potentially compatible with a feminist research ethic. Shapiro (2005) encourages us to address “the great questions of the day” rather than get mired down in narrow and exclusive disciplinary debates. But what are these great questions and do we agree on them? Our feminist atten- tiveness to power and to marginalization is provoked here. In the discipline of Political Science for example, we may, broadly speaking, know what the great topics or themes are about; they are about the nature and dynamics of democracy, citizenship, political community and power as well as justice, world order, and equality. However, there are many possible research ques- tions and problems that could be posed within the porous boundaries of any of these topics. Who gets to decide and define the questions which are the truly great ones should be “up for grabs” and a matter of the force of the
60 Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science
best argument (which may require contesting the norms of “best argument” as well).
More likely then, the questions that are considered great questions (with the emphasis on great) are determined by questions of politics and power themselves, as feminists and other critically-minded scholars have pointed out. “How people see the world and what they perceive as problems are determined to a great extent by their location in the social structure” (Karraker and Larner 1984: 497). In particular, the resources and accolades attributed to different research questions and research agendas are shaped by the structuring of gender, race, class, national and international privilege in and through knowledge production.
We need to be self-reflective about how and from what location we construct our research questions and it is important to consult with research subject-participants. The great question of the day for a Soweto widow caring for six grandchildren who have lost their mother to the HIV/AIDS pandemic may not be the same as the great question of the day for a Yale professor of politics. We may be able to persuade a professor of politics, other scholars, and other citizens that one of the great questions of our day is about how gender relations shape sexual practices and specifically, the spread of HIV/AIDS. This research question responds to the observation that many more women than men are infected by HIV/AIDs in Africa, and seeks to examine the social roots of the global disease. The question is not great until we make the argument for its greatness. And that is a political argument.
Contrary to some claims, feminism’s normative commitments are not what distinguish it from mainstream research. Like critical theorist Robert Cox (Cox with Sinclair 1996), feminists argue, “theory is always for someone, and for some purpose”, and thus, that all research on politics and society is inherently normative whether consciously or not (Haraway 1988). What distinguishes feminist research questions is that they are constructed from critical perspectives that seek to understand and transform existing social relations rather than to solve problems within the existing social and politi- cal order.
Conceptualizing research as question-driven gets us beyond research that is narrowly driven by adherence to a single technical method (where methods seek questions rather than the other way around) or theoretical paradigm (where the theory selects and a priori frames the acceptable questions). However, it does raise other problems about “who knows” and “where our research questions come from.” The experience of feminist researchers in opening innovative areas of research by asking new questions and reframing old problems is illustrative. For example, feminist psychologists asked new questions about the effects of divorce on the health and wellbeing of single mothers when most research was questioning the loss of masculinity for fatherless boys. They also reframed old problems such as rape as an act of aggression rather than as an issue pertaining to sexuality (Worrell 2000: 188–9). As good scholars we need to argue, and not merely assert that our research problem or question is a vexing problem or question in the first place, and why it is important, interesting and puzzling. An essential starting point for research and for generating research questions is, therefore, that we must take nothing for granted; to paraphrase one of Marx’s better apho- risms, a researcher should be “ruthlessly critical of all that exists.”
Where Do Good Questions Come From?
Conventional scientific disciplines have had very little to say about where good, or even great, research questions come from. Although they may acknowledge that research questions are informed by the values and norma- tive preferences of the researcher and community of researchers in a given field they treat this “context of discovery” apart from the “context of justi- fication” where research is carried out through the testing of hypotheses. Indeed, the generation of questions and hypotheses is seen as outside of science itself. Consequently, there is no accountability for the process of deciding among them (which questions and hypotheses are included and excluded) within a research discipline, paradigm, program, or agenda (see Key Concept 4.1).
Karl Popper argued that science does not have an account of itself and that there is no sure method for arriving at valid new ideas (Popper 1959). Popper’s view is that we generate ideas through a whole range of means and sources including observation, inspiration, tradition, dreams, and studies of previous attempts to solve similar problems, perception of flaws in old or new problems and solutions. But in his account, the various means by which we generate ideas are irrelevant since the main thing is to subject all our ideas to critical analysis and testing. Unfortunately, this position shared by many researchers has left the question of how we come up with research questions largely shrouded in darkness. It has also foreclosed the ethical and norma- tive issues that are raised by our choices to pursue some research questions or address some problems over other research questions and problems. For feminist researchers this is a significant issue: Why, for instance, have more resources been poured into studying terrorism in terms of threats to state borders rather than the political and economic inequalities within Islamic countries vis à vis the West or the constructions of masculinity in western and non-western contexts that contribute to global insecurity? (e.g. Agathangelou and Ling 2004; Kaufman-Osborn 2006). This is one just example of the kind of trade-offs continually at work in the privileging of certain research questions and agendas in a world where power relations and political considerations almost always shape our research within it.
62 Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science
4.1 PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: A QUICK REVIEW OF POPPER, KUHN, AND LAKATOS
For Popper: Researchers stumble onto empirical problems or questions by any means. They then propose theories containing specific hypothesis to explain these phenomena or answer these questions. These hypotheses can only be falsified by evidence, they can never be confirmed. Scientific change and revolution are thus continuous, but scientific progress is not ensured.
For Kuhn: Science and scientific research communities that pose prob- lems are based on dominant paradigms characterized by shared research prob- lems, as well as shared norms and values. Normal science conditions the dominant paradigm, determines which problems are solvable, and solves them with certain methods (unsolvable problems are excluded). Against this backdrop, the presence and persistence of anomalies (including anomalous questions) leads to a crisis within the
paradigm and possibly an abrupt para- digm shift to a new dominant para- digm. The new paradigm has a different conceptual framework that suggests new problems and methods to solve them. Scientific revolution is thus discontinuous and scientific progress may occur within but not across para- digms.
For Lakatos: Rational progress in science is possible through research programs that contain a hard core of theories and answerable questions, a negative heuristic to guard the hard core theories and assumptions and a positive heuristic which augments the hard core and enables it to deal with new research questions and method- ological innovations. Paradigm shifts in science can occur but only when the hard core can no longer address the new problems.
Feminists challenge the distinction in positivist science between the context of discovery and the context of justification. As Sandra Harding (2000) argues, the social and often gender-biased assumptions made in the questions mainstream disciplines ask and in the conceptual frameworks used to consti- tute a research program can completely escape the kind of critical examina- tion to which more explicit elements of scientific projects are subjected during the context of justification. “The best methods used in the context of justifi- cation provide no resources for identifying social or cognitive assumptions and frameworks (such as androcentric or Eurocentric ones) that are shared by an entire research community” (Harding 1991, 2000). In the feminist view, the researcher’s normative context affects the entire research process. This feminist perspective contrasts with that of conventional scientific research which is focused mostly on scrutinizing already-established hypotheses rather than the generation of hypotheses and thus is inattentive to the normative commitments sustained by established hypotheses.
KEY CONCEPT
Question-Driven Research 63
A feminist research ethic guides us to be critical of our values and the impact of our personal experiences on our research, and indeed on the devel- opment of our research questions. We argue that how our social context shapes us and our research questions should be a part of our account of research in the political and social sciences, making visible the research process as an integral part of research (Bristow and Esper 1984: 492). We should consciously seek to make the assumptions behind our research ques- tion explicit. Standpoint theorists place the context of discovery under criti- cal methodological scrutiny by self-consciously generating research questions and hypotheses from “the standpoint of the lives of women and other marginalized groups whose interests have been neglected in the constitution of scientific problematics” (Harding 2000 online; also 1991, 1998). But one need not advocate a standpoint position in order to situate and scrutinize the assumptions of our research questions.
Sometimes a research question becomes salient because of dominant fram- ings by powerful institutional actors. We need to acknowledge this so that we do not uncritically accept the institutional actors’ frame but rather frame the question in ways that are open to many possible interpretations and not one predestined answer. For example, there might be the way in which “sex trafficking” has recently come to be seen as a major problem of national interest and global scope as if it did not exist prior to its articulation on the policy agenda of dominant states. Trafficking, for instance, is often seen as a problem of illegal immigration, prostitution which is a criminal offence, money laundering, and racketeering rather than a violation of women’s human rights, the right to decent work, violence against women and so on (Berman 2003; Sullivan 2003). Research projects are always constituted through economic, social, cultural, and political values, including gender values. The point is to make the acknowledgment of these values a produc- tive site for probing and further clarifying our research questions.
Generating Questions through Gender Analysis
Gender analysis is a common analytical approach in feminist research – although researchers whose research is not explicitly feminist-informed increasingly use some aspects of gender analysis. It is typically seen as the quintessential and unique feminist approach to research. That is not the argument of this book, however. As we show here, it is the use of a femi- nist research ethic to guide it that makes gender analysis feminist rather than vice versa. But gender analysis opens up a whole landscape of new research questions as well as giving us tools to rethink old research ques- tions. Given the pervasiveness of gender norms and structures across soci- eties, gender as an analytic category can illuminate new areas of inquiry, frame research questions or puzzles in need of exploration and “provideglected research questions: Goldstein on war and gender
In War and Gender Joshua Goldstein (2001) starts with this puzzle: Why has war been primarily a male activity across history, culture, and countries despite the considerable variation in gender relations across cultures and history?
Goldstein observes that: “The most warlike cultures are also the most sexist” (2001: 20). He then asks two further questions:
1. How do constructions of masculinity motivate soldiers (men and women) to fight (to protect)?
2. How does war-making shape masculinity? (2001: 9)
As Barbara Ehrenreich (1999) argues, it is not only men that make wars but wars that make men.
concepts, definitions and hypothesis to guide research” (Hawkesworth 2005: 141). It can also help us to critically analyze data, observations, and interpretations.
For example, feminist-informed researchers are led to gender analysis and to ask gender-sensitive research questions by our observations that some- thing is missing from existing accounts of social and political reality. In Mala Htun’s words, we engage in “gender analysis because women are not there” (Htun 2005: 162). If you want to study women in politics and there is an absence of women politicians or leaders to study this you may lead you to shift to studying gender norms and structures and how they shape politics and constrain political representation.
Feminist scholars have exposed how gender values have conditioned research questions. Until recently in the international relations field these questions were largely to do with the “heroic and masculine domain of wars and politico-diplomatic struggles among the only actors judged significant – nation-states” (Bleiker 2003: 416). This feminist “uncovering” has in itself been a major contribution to knowledge; making possible a new set of research agendas and questions about how gender dynamics shape and are shaped by international relations. The masculine values informing the field have led to a glaring neglect of important problems and patterns in interna- tional relations. For instance, Katharine Moon (1997) asks: What role does the sex industry play in military relations between countries? In so doing she uncovers prostitution on foreign bases and shows how the international rela- tions between the US and South Korea depend on its existence and manage- ment. Joshua Goldstein’s research on war and gender illustrates this point as well (see Box 4.1).
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When we decide on our particular research question, a feminist research ethic reminds us to consider what further research questions are potentially included and excluded, what is being remembered and what is being forgot- ten, who will be silenced and marginalized or remain silent, absent and marginalized if we ask this question in this way? For instance, when we high- light the gender dimension of a problem, such as the transmission of HIV/AIDs in Africa are we potentially neglecting analysis of sexuality, including positive accounts of diverse, desiring sexualities (see Reid and Walker 2005)?
How Can I Come Up With a Good Question?
Having established that we need to be conscious of the starting points for research, to explicitly argue for rather than merely state the research ques- tions, we have some advice for developing and refining your research ques- tions before discussing the development of feminist-inspired research questions. Clearly posed questions are an excellent way to begin a disserta- tion or funding proposal, a research presentation, or publication (Przeworski and Salomon 1995).
As Goldstein illustrates in Box 4.2, a good study has one clear puzzle or question that explores one limited concept or thesis. This puzzle may have one or two more related questions as does Goldstein’s puzzle about why men and typically not women go to war across history and cultures. The puzzle may require paper/article-length treatment or thesis/book-length treatment. Regardless of the anticipated length of the final work product, you should be able to state your puzzle succinctly. By the time you are done, you should be able to state it succinctly in a way that your aunt or high school friend could understand. Kirshner (1996: 511) suggests that the author should be able to write down his question on a three by five index card and then tape it above his desk.
We have found it useful to keep a folder that contains various iterations of our research questions on any one project. In the proposal stage and as we work through the project, we refine our question as we go and add to the folder. This folder reminds us of where we started, helps us to be able to review our research journey, and prompts us to reflect further on the dynamic nature of the research process as we experience it and when it is time for exposition. For example, a dissertation proposal defense that includes the history of the development of your research question can be very effective.
Importantly, you should be able to communicate your research question to a non-specialist in the space of the time you are in an elevator together – “the elevator test.” We typically recommend that you discuss your question with a friend or family member. How will you persuade them that your research
66 Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science
question is an important one using both your own opinion and some prelim- inary evidence? Writing an email or letter to a friend telling them about your question and why it’s a crucial one can be a good way to start. We have done this with each other during this project a lot and have found it an extremely fruitful way of crystallizing ideas without belaboring them. It is incumbent on feminist researchers to share their research with a broader audience beyond academic specializations, so it is good to start by making sure your research question resonates with other concerned citizens and groups.
For many feminist and non-feminist researchers, research questions do not come from the mainstream scholarly literature. That is not to say you should not familiarize yourself with the debates and contestations in your field and related fields. Doing this is important for inspiring research questions but also for thinking seriously about the debates to which you want to contribute – from the outset and for enabling your colleagues to consider your work in its intellectual context (see Chapter six).
Types of Research Questions
There are different types of research questions which entail different episte- mologies, kinds of research design, methods of data collection and analysis and so on (also Knopf 2006). There are research questions that address new issues or phenomena that have not yet been researched in a particular field or that have been “forgotten”. In addition, there are research questions that challenge existing mainstream knowledge on a particular topic or issue with new empirical research or theoretical interpretations. In generating the first (“new” research questions), a scholar cannot easily build on existing schol- arship. For instance, Cynthia Enloe’s research has self-consciously gone against the grain of disciplinary concerns. In the late 1980s she asked “where the women are in international relations” which animated a new subfield of feminist international relations and encouraged mainstream scholars to question their questions (Enloe [1989] 1990). Now that the field of feminist IR is developed, Enloe asks the second type of question, using “new” data to inform her questions and analysis. In The Curious Feminist (2004), she asks where are the women in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq? Enloe foregrounds the perspectives of those women on the margins of world politics, including prostitutes on US foreign military bases, servicewomen in the military, Afghani women organizing under military occupation, women in Asian multinational sneaker factors, privileged diplomatic wives and women leaders. In this way, she is able to show the connections between the so-called powerful and powerless and how international relations depend on particu- lar configurations of gendered social relations.
New questions and questions that challenge familiar approaches are related. In Enloe’s case and that of other feminist researchers, engagement,
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experience, and events in the world, both personal and vicarious, can reveal new research questions. We encourage researchers to share ideas with fellow travelers, to attend seminars, discussion fora, meetings and conferences, to read and be attentive to a wide range of scholarly and non-scholarly sources and media, including Internet blogs and publications, newspapers, newslet- ters, and journals, and to talk with classmates and friends outside of class. We want our imagination to be sparked, to be prompted to see new phenom- ena and in new ways, and often this happens in unexpected places and times. If we put ourselves in many different spaces, relevant to our general areas of interest, then we are more likely to be inspired with a question than if we sit isolated in a university library. James Scott, a political scientist with close affinities with anthropology and feminism, is even more categorical about reading beyond your discipline:
If half of your reading is not outside the confines of [your discipline], you are risking extinction along with the rest of the subspecies. Most of the notable innovations in the discipline have come in the form of insights, perspectives, concepts, and paradigms originating elsewhere. Reading exclusively within the discipline is to risk reproducing ortho- doxies or, at the very least, absorbing innovations far from the source. We would do well to emulate the hybrid vigor of the plant and animal breeding world (Evans et al. 1996: 36).
A broad literature review that includes scholarly and non-scholarly sources, as we will see in the next chapter, may also help to illuminate your research questions. Working through the Exercise on the book’s website www.palgrave.com/methodology/doingfeministresearch is also intended to help you craft your questions.
Researchers often ask whether it is better to choose a research question on a current hot topic or on a less-studied issue or topic (see Chapter six for a discussion of real world constraints in determining your question). If it’s a hot topic it is also likely to be a crowded field. “The competitors will be more numerous and the competition less interesting than in truly unfamiliar terrain. Unless you have something original to say about them, you may well be advised to avoid topics styled of central interest to the discipline ... someone else may have already made the decisive and exciting contribution” (Przeworski and Salomon 1995). For feminist researchers it is more often the case that few people have researched your topic and that you, whether working in a class or independently, will need to generate new hypotheses and uncover new sources of information to research it. Our advice in either case is to choose a “fresh” question – particularly if the topic has an emerg- ing literature. If your instinct leads you to a problem far from the main- stream, follow it. Most breakthroughs in scholarly research and feminist
68 Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science
knowledge broadly have come from this kind of trailblazing and such papers
are more fun to research and write.
Good Questions have Surprising Answers
We also suggest choosing a question that is truly vexing to you, to which the answer is not obvious to you or others. You will be much more likely to sustain your research over a relatively long period of time if you really are curious about the possible answers to your question. If you are genuinely surprised by your provisional research findings as you are immersed in the research process you will be much more motivated to complete the research and share your findings with your audiences. Recounting his research on transnational/transversal practices of dissent by powerless citizens of author- itarian regimes Roland Bleiker (2003: 419–20) acknowledges his surprise that “seemingly mundane everyday forms of resistance” repeated over time were ultimately more powerful mechanisms of change than the often heroic, masculine street demonstrations projected around the world by the global media. Sasha Gear (2005) set out to explore how the rules, codes and mean- ings surrounding sexual practices in prisons in a South African province reproduce gendered identities. She found that male prisoners negotiate sex and gender, by both vehemently asserting oppressive power claims through “outside” and “inside” hegemonic masculinities, and also subverting them.
We have also encountered surprises in each of our own research projects. In my study of globalization and post-socialist transformations I (Jacqui) found feminist activism in strange and unexpected places, for instance, on the pages of localized versions of foreign multinational women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan and romantic novella such as Harlequin (True 2003). This “discovery” led me (Jacqui) to question some of my own assumptions about feminism, and this questioning had theoretical implications for my understanding of the gendered opportunities as well as constraints made possible by global markets. Ask yourself: do you expect to be surprised by your research or what are we going to learn as a result of your research that we do not know now? Identifying the key research questions of a project focuses and structures the project – making it manageable to get started with the research (see step five in the practical exercise on the website, http://www.palgrave.com/methodology/doingfeministresearch). It is a crucial preliminary step. Only once you have identified the parts of the argument you want to make can you think through theoretical approaches and methods that will help you develop and frame the research you will actually do. This advice on the ingredients and sources of inspiration for good research questions are summarized in the practical exercise on the website and in Box 4.2.
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Box 4.2 Checklist for a good question
Our version of a checklist for a good question is inspired by Baglione (2006):
• My question is vexing to me.
• My question is (or should be) interesting to me, scholars, policymak-
ers, and citizens, and interesting enough to sustain my interest
throughout the life of the project.
• My question is (or should be) important to me, scholars, policymak-
ers, and people.
• My question is fresh (whether new or addressing a familiar topic in a
challenging way).
• My question relates to one key concept or theme. I can state my ques-
tion clearly in one sentence, and very clearly in one paragraph.
• My question can be plausibly answered in my time-frame.
• The answer(s) to my question might be surprising to scholars, policy-
makers, people, and me.
What is Distinctive about Feminist Questions?
In the preceding section, to simplify a bit in order to focus on how to engage the challenge of coming up with a question that is worth arguing, we said that feminist-informed questions could be “new” or “challenging.” Not all good questions are feminist questions of course, but in this section we consider some of the questions feminists have asked and ask: “What makes them distinctly feminist?” Feminist research is often distinguished by its feminist research questions and conceptualization (Ackerly and Attanasi 2009), but in this book we have been arguing that feminist research is most distinctively recognized by its research ethic, more explicitly, by the method- ological implications that follow from a commitment to a research ethic. Many questions that are best researched guided by a feminist research ethic may not have a substantively feminist concern and may not be about gender relations or women, for instance. In Box 4.3, feminist scholar Ann Tickner engages in an exchange with Robert Keohane and discusses among other things the very different ways feminist and non-feminist international rela- tions scholars go about constructing research questions.
How does attention to power, relationality, boundaries, and our situated- ness as researchers lead to research questions? All of these are at play when feminist researchers confront the question of how to recognize themselves in fields founded on the exclusion of women and women’s experiences. One way feminist scholars have addressed this dilemma has been by suggesting new questions that put the effects on women of power, relationality, bound-
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Box 4.3 “You just don’t understand”: the Tickner- Keohane exchange in International Relations
Feminist scholars are often asked by non-feminist colleagues: “what is your research programme?” or “why does gender have anything to do with . . . ?” And “how can feminism solve real world problems such as . . . ?”
The topic of these oft-asked questions was the starting point for a dialogue between a feminist and an oft-cited neoliberal institutionalist scholar of international relations that took place in International Studies Quarterly, the flagship journal of the International Studies Association of North America.
Tickner:
Feminist and IR research questions reflect different realities and ontologies: for IR the universe consists of unitary states in an asocial, anarchic international envi- ronment, whereas for feminists individual and groups are embedded in and changed by social relations. They also reflect different epistemologies: feminists construct knowledge from marginalized and previously not heard, unfamiliar voices and issues and use this knowledge to challenge the core assumptions of the IR discipline. (1997: 617)
Why don’t feminists specify their theoretical hypotheses in ways that are testable and falsifiable with evidence? (1998: 197). For instance, hypotheses about the affect of gender hierarchy on inter-state behavior? Or about whether domestic gendered inequalities extend to transnational relations, e.g. foreign military bases, multi- national corporations, aid programs, etc. Gender could provide a new explanatory variable.
“You just don’t understand.” Because of the power inequalities between mainstream and feminist IR we are skeptical of your efforts to label some of our work more compatible than others. We need to take each other up on the other’s terms rather than apply the standards of one group to the other (1997: 619).
“Questions are not enough, feminist IR scholars will need to provide answers that will convince others – including those not ideologically predisposed to being convinced” (1998: 197).
Conversations such as these will not be successful until their legitimacy is recognized as part of the discipline (1997: 630). aries, and situatedness onto the research agenda of our fields. In the most simplistic formulation – the searching for “Her-story” – this sort of feminist scholarship puts new content, content about women, into our fields. It is hard to construct the experience of women from archival records that were not created by men who were interested in the experience of women. It is particularly hard because, women were not writing much of their own history, those men who were writing history were not writing about women, and those who later collected the artifacts of past civilizations were not inter- esting in the artifacts that women used (household objects), but rather were interested in the public buildings for politics, markets, and cultural displays.
Of course, some invisible women’s experience is not historical but contem- porary. As with doing archival and archaeological work to recover a lost past, uncovering women’s experiences in the present can also require methodological innovation as much of the data necessary to understand women’s contemporary lives are not visible or readily visible (Roth 2004).
As difficult as these kinds of work are, feminists have made great strides in recovering women’s experiences, past and present. A related set of ques- tions emerge from our observing this history and present: feminists seek to understand how and why women are devalued and disempowered across societies, cultures and history relative to men, and how this situation of inequality and injustice can be changed. Often gender is introduced as an analytic tool both to explain the absence or neglect of women, addressing a “why” question, i.e. “why are there so few women” possibly with an epis- temology that assumes we can disaggregate causes from their effects and a statistical research design that explores common patterns of factors affecting women’s political representation (see Tremblay 2007). Gender analysis may also be used to formulate “how” research questions that seek to gain a particular vantage point on the nature of social and political institutions and are often explored with a post-positivist epistemology (standpoint, postcolo- nial, postmodern) and ethnographic or in-depth single case study research designs. “How” questions that address how the political reality of male dominance is produced and reproduced may include asking how gender constructs are deployed in different contexts, how gender operates under specific historical conditions, and how therefore, to transform how gender works at all levels (see Garwood 2005).
Feminist research questions also ask “how” gender inequality and injus- tice affect a whole range of non-gender specific social and political issues, thus reframing them as feminist issues. For example, consider Brooke’s research question: Is there a theory of human rights that can respect diver- sity and obligate us to action? (Ackerly 2008a). This question is inspired by reflexive feminist theory and its attentiveness to cultural diversity but also by the practical need emanating from global women’s movements for a human rights framework that recognizes women’s rights as integral to human rights.
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It is posed to enable connections between different communities of scholars, activists and policymakers. Carol Gilligan’s work on moral development and Ester Boserup’s work on economic development illustrate how mainstream research questions and related policy practices can be reconceived through a feminist lens.
Further, understanding the ways in which social, political, economic, and cultural experiences of women are different relative to men, feminists ask, what does understanding these differences do for our understanding of important social, political, economic, and cultural phenomena such as glob- alization, democracy, governance, religion, etc. For example, consider Jacqui’s research questions in light of the transformations from communism in Eastern Europe: First, “how” (i.e. through what processes) are changing gender relations shaping and being shaped by marketization and liberaliza- tion? And second, do these new forms of economic and cultural globaliza- tion open up spaces for women’s empowerment and feminist politics? These questions are inspired by an understanding of gender as a social construc- tion, which is constructed differently across place and time with different implications for women and men’s lives.
Often plainly-stated, feminist research questions can be telling for the power relations they reveal. In their collaboratively written, Undivided Rights, Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross and Elena Gutiérrez begin with an account of their connection to their subject:
We are not dispassionate observers of our subject – from the outset this book was conceived of as a political project. We set out to “lift up” the voices and the achievements of women of color who are transforming the struggle for sexual and reproductive health and rights into a move- ment for reproductive justice (Silliman et al. 2004: vii).
Their principle finding does not surprise them, but it has important polit- ical implications for human rights theory and women’s health policy:
Activists must be firm in their support for abortion rights, but at the same time not let abortion politics eclipse equally pressing issues such as access to health care or racial disparities in health care delivery ... Only comprehensive, inclusive, and action-oriented agendas will redirect the reproductive and sexual rights movement in a way that is relevant and compelling to the diversity of women who constitute America today (Silliman et al. 2004: 304).
Not only do feminists pose “new” and “challenging,” “how” and “why” questions for the mainstream of their fields, but also they pose important questions to each other. The preceding example from Silliman et al. is one
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such example, but these questions can be theoretical and methodological as well. Feminist questions may be concerned with theoretical debates within feminism and with the tools of feminist research, both of which are questions about empowering feminism as a field of knowledge.
How do we judge a good feminist-informed research question? Here a feminist research ethic is your guide. Whatever sort of problem you are pursuing a good question from a feminist perspective will have both norma- tive and practical relevance and be attentive to all of the forms of hierarchy that determine “relevance.” It should be attentive to possible marginaliza- tion and silencing and the broader context in which the question is posed. These contextual considerations are not only the politics surrounding the substance of the question, but also the politics of the disciplinary context in which it is studied. The researcher should consider her relationships with the question, those affected by topics related to the question, and with others who are studying aspects of the issue from within her home field and in cognate disciplines, particularly other feminists.
The question should be fresh, making strange what was previously famil- iar (e.g. Harding 1991; Kronsell 2006). The question should be openly but not naively asked such that the researcher can maintain a self-reflexive stance given the likelihood that the question will change its form as it is pursued through research. In addition, a research question informed by a feminist research ethic should allow the researcher to reach out beyond disciplinary debates to broader knowledge-based communities to address shared, every- day concerns and to make visible gendered power relations and the status of women in the process.
We should always ask ourselves the purpose of our research and who will benefit from our efforts to ask and address this research question. Ian Shapiro observes that “in discipline after discipline the flight from reality has been so complete that the academics have all but lost sight of what they claim is their object of study” (Shapiro 2005: 2). Feminist scholars are not immune to “losing touch” but one of our hallmarks is to keep our feet firmly on the ground with a sense of accountability to a larger constituency and social movement.
Answers to research questions informed by a feminist research ethic are not predetermined by the normative commitments of a feminist theorist to gender justice any more than a democratic peace scholar’s normative commitment to peace influences her findings about democracy and conflict. Indeed, it is possible to start with a feminist question and complete your research with an answer that extends beyond feminist theory, synthesizing feminist and non-feminist traditions. For example, Lynn Savery probes why gender inequalities persist in the world despite the existence of an interna- tional convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW) and why these CEDAW commitments fail to filter down
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to states and local communities (Savery 2006). Part of her answer to this question is a constructivist analysis of state identity and its gender-biased nature. Savery identifies the gendered identity of the state as the most signif- icant barrier to CEDAW’s diffusion based on a comparative institutional analysis and critical realist epistemology (see also Archer 1995).
Situating Feminist Questions
Feminist research departs from many of the norms of mainstream fields. This makes it vitally important to communicate and justify your research in the mainstream field as well as in a feminist context on the terms that you choose. As Tickner (1997: 629) points out (and Box 4.3 illustrates more- over), the power inequalities between feminist and conventional perspectives in a field generally mean that feminists cannot afford to be as ignorant of the mainstream as conventional perspectives are of feminism. In the practical exercise on the website http://www.palgrave.com/methodology/doingfemi- nistresearch we share some advice on how to situate your research within a broader field. It is a matter of becoming very familiar with the scholarship in your field from a range of perspectives and actively choosing your entry points, guided by a feminist research ethic. Using the criteria suggested by a feminist research ethic – attentiveness to power, boundaries, relationships, and our situatedness as researchers – will help you to identify the perspectives and conversations which are conceptually and ethically most compelling.
While a feminist may wish to challenge the norms by which her discipline has engaged with a question or may wish to challenge the norms and disci- plinary expectations of her course instructor, she must do so in a way that conforms to professional norms so that she does not alienate herself from her field while she tries to contribute to it and so that she can do well in the class. Therefore, your research paper or proposal will need a “situating the research” section in which you:
● review what is known about the puzzle in the field;
● assess the strengths and weaknesses of the literature that exists on the
topic; in a class context, your course instructor may expect you to focus on the literature in the syllabus, or at least to include it in your broader survey; and
● identify the significance of gaps in your field’s knowledge such that your research should be conducted (and funded).
In this section, the researcher displays her knowledge of the field and her ability to think critically about it and to improve it. Further, this section makes obvious to her supervisor or granting organization why this project is
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important. For a granting organization or job talk, the justification will be framed more broadly, for a more specialized audience, more narrowly (see Chapter thirteen on writing and presenting your research).
One strategy for situating your research question is to think of it on a continuum between problem-solving and critical theory approaches (Cox with Sinclair 1996). At one end of the continuum you identify a problem or puzzle in existing society and politics and aim to provide practical knowledge that can address that problem in the short to medium term. Much policy analysis takes this approach and one of the limitations of problem-solving questions is that they are relatively less attentive to deeper causal factors. At the other end of the continuum, taking a critical theory approach, you are critical of the existing society and politics, questioning the research questions of mainstream fields and the way problems and issues are framed by dominant actors. Such an approach is wide-ranging and often involves taking a historical or meta-theoretical perspective. As Keohane notes in the context of the scholarly exchange with Tickner discussed in Box 4.3, there are trade-offs made in the decision to locate your research question on this continuum: “the more critical and wide- ranging an author’s [research question], the more difficult it is to do comparative, empirical analysis” (1998: 196). Many feminist questions are on the end of the continuum that worries Keohane. Not all are, however (e.g., Caprioli 2000, 2003, 2004; Caprioli and Boyer 2001; Joachim 2003; Kinsella 2005; True and Mintrom 2001). As we previously noted, some “why” questions that seek to explain social and political phenomena and informed by a feminist research ethic are particularly suited to compara- tive, small n or large n statistical research designs (see also Chapters seven and eleven).
Where is your feminist research question positioned on this continuum? What is the trade-off in pursuing the more critical approach, or a more problem-solving approach? Guided by a feminist research ethic, we can be self-reflexive about these ethical choices, and choose a research question that is more or less problem-solving, more or less critical by design.
Conclusion
In a feminist research project, the literature review does not reveal a gap (“lacuna” if you want a fancy Latin word) in the literature, but rather lays out the intellectual debts of the author, her principle interlocutors, and a landscape of opportunity for exploration. We should be looking not to fill niches in an existing mainstream field but to open up horizons, whole new landscapes for exploration and expose canyons of neglect in conventional research. Beyond each puzzle lie so many more.
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Choosing and framing a research question is a crucial anticipated delibera- tive moment in research design. Asking the right question is at least as impor- tant as how we answer it. Applying a feminist research ethic, a scholar can make political and ethical dimensions explicit as she develops her question.
In the next chapter, we discuss how theory and conceptualization can illu- minate our research questions and puzzles. The literature review in particu- lar, is a way of illuminating a puzzle by establishing what is and what is not known about the puzzle. It opens up a greater range of research questions and agendas for exploration and different interpretations of them. Importantly, it can serve as yet another intended deliberative moment to rethink and reframe your research question.
