3. Gender-Sensitive Research

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this lecture, we think about feminist approaches to gender-sensitive research, focusing in particular on: (i) the feminist argument, against positivism, that respondents’ emotions are an important part of research and should be included in research accounts; (ii) emotional management and the ethical need for researchers to consider issues of sensitivity when engaging with respondents; (iii) gendered assumptions regarding the greater responsibility on women for emotional management and how this is reflected in expectations placed upon male and female researchers; (iv) the issue of risk in research and the extent to which this is gendered.

Course

In this course, Professor Gayle Letherby (University of Plymouth) explores ideas and methods associated with feminist social research. In the first lecture, we consider feminist critiques of traditional sociological research. In the second lecture, we look at the ways in which feminist scholars incorporate gender and other differences into their research. In the third lecture, we think about issues of emotion and sensitivity in the research process. Next, we turn to feminist engagements with qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In the fifth lecture, we consider feminist approaches to epistemology. In the sixth and final lecture, we consider ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, and the place of politics and values in the research process.

Lecturer

Professor Gayle Letherby is Honorary Professor of Sociology at the University of Plymouth. Her areas of interest include social research methods, particularly feminist methodologies, and the sociology of the family. She is co-author of Introduction to Gender: Social Science Perspectives (2014) and Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research (2013), and author of Feminist Research in Theory and Practice (2003).