THE MEANINGS OF METHODOLOGYit cannot find stable work. When a woman in the
same family cannot find stable work outside the
home, it is not considered an equal family problem.
Likewise, traditional researchers often use the
concept unwed mother,but it is not a parallel of
unwed father.
The feminist approach sees researchers as
fundamentally gendered beings. Researchers nec-
essarily have a gender that shapes how they experi-
ence reality, and therefore it affects their research.
In addition to gender’s impact on individual re-
searchers, basic theoretical assumptions and the
scientific community appear as gendered cultural
contexts. Gender has a pervasive influence in cul-
ture and shapes basic beliefs and values that cannot
be isolated and insulated in the social processes of
scientific inquiry.^24
Feminist researchers are not objective or de-
tached; they interact and collaborate with the people
they study. They fuse their personal and profes-
sional lives. For example, feminist researchers will
attempt to comprehend an interviewee’s experi-
ences while sharing their own feelings and experi-
ences. This process may give birth to a personal
relationship between researcher and interviewee
that might mature over time. Reinharz (1992:263)
argued, “This blurring of the disconnection between
formal and personal relations, just as the removal of
the distinction... between the research project and
the researcher’s life, is a characteristic of much, if
not all, feminist research.”
The impact of a woman’s perspective and
her desire to gain an intimate relationship with
what she studies occurs even in the biological sci-
ences. Feminist researchers tend to avoid quantita-
tive analysis and experiments. They use multiple
methods, often qualitative research and case stud-
ies. Gorelick (1991) criticized the affinity of many
feminist researchers for interpretive social science.
ISS is limited to the consciousness of those being
studied and fails to reveal hidden structures. Gore-
lick wants feminist researchers to adopt a critical
approach and to advocate social change more
assertively.
Feminist researchers reject the value-neutral
claim of positivists. For example, Risman (2001)
criticized a study that tried to explain gender
differences almost entirely with biological factors.
She argued (p. 606) that “the positivist model of
science not only failed in this particular instance to
recognize and exclude the expression of particular
political values, but that value-free science as such
is not only an impossible goal but it is an inappro-
priate one that distorts the research and publication.”
She noted (p. 609) that “value-neutrality can be a
cloak that hides (perhaps even from scientists them-
selves) values that are so embedded in the folk wis-
dom of our culture so as to be invisible. Researchers
who believe they are working within an apolitical,
value-neutral version of science are, often without
any conscious decision at all, simply ignoring the
ways in which dominant presumptions frame their
questions.”Postmodern Research
Postmodern researchis part of the larger postmod-
ern movement that includes art, music, literature,
and cultural criticism. It began in the humanities
and has roots in the philosophies of existential-
ism, nihilism, and anarchism and in the ideas of
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Michel Foucault
(1926–1984), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900),
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), and Ludwig Witt-
genstein (1889–1951). Postmodernism is a rejec-
tion of modernism. Modernismrefers to basic
assumptions, beliefs, and values that arose in the
Enlightenment era. Modernism relies on logical rea-
soning; it is optimistic about the future and believes
in progress; it has confidence in technology and sci-
ence; and it embraces humanist values (i.e., judg-
ing ideas based on their effect on human welfare).
Modernism holds that most people can agree about
standards of beauty, truth, and morality.^25
Postmodern researchers see no separation be-
tween the arts or humanities and social sciences.
They share the critical social science goal of de-
mystifying the social world, and want to deconstruct
or tear apart surface appearances and reveal the hid-
den structure. Like extreme forms of ISS, postmod-
ernism distrusts abstract explanation and holds that
research can never do more than describe and that
all descriptions are equally valid. A researcher’s
description is neither superior nor inferior to anyone