Review

No more invisible men

DOING FEMINIST RESEARCH
ed Helen Roberts
Routledge, 1990

Doing Feminist Research is not a guide to ‘right on’ research, but a thoughtful and stimulating analysis of sociological methods by feminist practitioners. It examines the masculine culture and discourse within which sociology has developed and how this has defined what is important in terms of academic study, namely the world of men.

Feminist research aims to explore and include the significance of gender and of sexual divisions within society: to make women’s lives ‘visible’. As David Morgan, the only male contributor to this book, points out: ‘men were there all the time, but we did not see them because we thought we were looking at mankind’.

A recurrent theme is the link between research as a scientific method of enquiry and its practice, the political context within which research takes place. This theme is explored with the authors examining the implications of a feminist perspective on the research process by drawing on their own experience of undertaking research. But this is no navel-gazing exercise. Rather it provides a coherent theoretical critique of the limitations within mainstream sociology of a scientific rationality which has rendered women’s lives invisible.

As Helen Roberts states: ‘feminist sociologists, in arguing that gender should be taken into account in theory and practice, are arguing for more, and not less, vigorous research methods’.

It is ten years since the collection was first published, but it is as relevant now as it was then and its reappearance is to be warmly welcomed. Not only is it a valuable contribution to the wider debate about feminist sociology, it also contains a useful and thought-provoking insight into the research process itself and the practical, theoretical and ethical implications for anyone undertaking research from this perspective.