Gender & Development

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Introduction: Feminist values in research

Katy Jenkins, Lata Narayanaswamy & Caroline Sweetman

To cite this article: Katy Jenkins, Lata Narayanaswamy & Caroline Sweetman (2019)
Introduction: Feminist values in research, Gender & Development, 27:3, 415-425, DOI:
10.1080/13552074.2019.1682311

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Published online: 29 Oct 2019.

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GENDER & DEVELOPMENT
2019, VOL. 27, NO. 3, 415–425
https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2019.1682311

Introduction: Feminist values in research

Katy Jenkins, Lata Narayanaswamy and Caroline Sweetman

Welcome to the Feminist Values in Research issue of Gender & Development. In May
2018, Gender & Development and the Women and Development Study Group of the
UK Development Studies Association (DSA) co-hosted a seminar of the same title, to cele-
brate the journal’s 25th birthday. This issue includes articles initially presented there,
alongside a range of others, commissioned in line with our usual practice from an open
Call for Contributions.
To ensure international development supports women’s rights and gender equality, it is
essential that feminist values infuse and underpin every aspect of research. Feminist values
in research may be understood in a variety of ways. The overarching goal is to create
spaces and opportunities to reveal lived realities of power inequalities and difference,
and provide evidence that can be deployed in working towards addressing these engrained
inequalities. Feminist values are most often deployed to challenge the continued margin-
alisation of poor women and girls from decision-making, resources and opportunities in a
range of contexts. Feminist values and a related focus on ‘gender’ can also allow us to talk
about sexual orientation and gender identities in all their diversity, and gendered power
relations between individuals and groups. Our starting point in the curation of the work-
shop that inspired this issue of the journal is that the research process should reflect fem-
inist values, empowering all who participate in it.
Research into the gendered nature of development and analysis of its failure to recog-
nise and/or respond to the differential needs and challenges of women and men is a critical
part of feminist activism and transformation, and this is as true today as it was when Gen-
der & Development was launched. Above all, feminist researchers in international devel-
opment are interested in power: its nature, the ways it can be wielded, and by whom.
We are interested in the effect powerful institutions and the elites who head them have
on gender inequality, the material effects of which tend disproportionately to affect
women and girls living in poverty in the global South. We want to understand how the
slow progress to women’s equal rights is going, where it is encountering resistance, and
how women and girls – in particular the most marginalised - are finding opportunities
to negotiate with the powerful, find spaces for resistance, and organise for empowerment.
The political project that we all share, to achieve gender equality by asserting full and equal
rights, is about using agency – ‘power to’ and ‘power with’ – to challenge patriarchal
‘power-over’.

CONTACT Caroline Sweetman [email protected]

© 2019 Oxfam GB
416 K. JENKINS ET AL.

Feminist researchers in international development are working in a space where there

are multiple intersecting relations of power operating concurrently in interlocking ways,
privileging women from high-income countries, white women, and women from powerful
elites and majority groups. Among the first global feminist research collectives was the
pathbreaking Development with Women for a New era (DAWN) network, which in
the 1980s put forward its feminist, postcolonial analysis of international development.
It is this vision that underpinned the global vision forged at the Fourth World Conference
on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The challenge since has been for the feminist move-
ment to avoid gender equality and women’s rights goals being co-opted by the ‘main-
stream’ in ways that depoliticise feminist struggle, and to ensure that feminist research
nurtures space for the expression of diverse, contextualised understandings of gendered
power imbalances. Gender and Development has always sought to accommodate these
different approaches, whilst striving ultimately to promote women’s rights and gender
equality.
The writers in this issue represent a diverse group of feminists working in academia,
policy research and practice – including monitoring, evaluation and learning. Each of
these different contexts holds specific challenges for feminists, but the key feminist
value underpinning all their research experiences is the aim of challenging and ending
inequality between women and men, affirming women as expert knowers, marginalised
by patriarchal power yet exercising agency in often constrained circumstances to further
their interests and needs, and those of their dependents.
Both the issue, and the workshop from which it emerges, aim to provide a space where
researchers can reflect upon their own experience of research – as investigators, partici-
pants, practitioners, academics and/or activists – and the challenges and contradictions
they have faced in conducting feminist research, from practical and organisational barriers
and struggles, to ethical and methodological dilemmas. How does embedding feminist
values in research enable us to navigate and deal with difficult subjects and sensitivities
in ways that might otherwise not be possible? How do feminist research practices enable
us to translate our values into meaningful ways of tackling inequalities, poverty and exclu-
sion in the global South? The articles here grapple with these issues across a wide range of
different development contexts.

Looking at research through a gendered lens

Historically, educated and predominantly white and Northern male elites have defined
knowledge and learning, placing a high value on research involving ‘objective’ methods
seen as removing the dangers of bias, and revealing ‘facts’. Feminists, however, have high-
lighted the unconscious bias embedded in these apparently value-free research method-
ologies, and the skewed findings that result from the assumption that researchers can
remain neutral and external to any research process. There has also been a tendency to
ignore difference, instead starting from an assumption that there is nothing distinctive
and different about the experiences of women, girls and non-gender conforming groups
– or that these distinctions and differences between women and men are not significant
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 417

or important to analyse and include in findings; the experiences of men have been
assumed to be the norm, from which others deviate.
In international development research, unconscious biases that privilege male, Western
European and US ideas about women and men, and gender roles and relations, and which
reproduced colonial thinking, created early international development programming that
ignored the existence of very different ways of thinking about sex, gender, family and
society, and different divisions of labour and responsibility in households and commu-
nities. When international development policies misfire, they can do significant harm,
as feminists researching the impact of gender-blind development have shown over four
decades.
International development policies of past decades have had the most devastating and
damaging effects on women and girls who are most distanced from power and resources,
due to other aspects of their identities. This, too, is currently being acknowledged in ‘main-
stream’ international development thinking, and expressed in global policy commitments.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflect a global acknowledgement that com-
plex inequalities (including but not limited to age, education, religion, ethnicity, caste, and
SOGI [sexual orientation and gender identity]) need to be better understood in order to
ensure they can be challenged by a new generation of development initiatives informed
by intersectional feminist approaches aiming to achieve the aim of the SDGs, of ‘leaving
no-one behind’.
In this issue, authors emphasise the link between who does the research, and the quality
of the findings and analyses that emerge. They are also keen to emphasise how they inter-
act with the research process, and the challenges this creates for pursuing feminist research
values where they see themselves as part of, rather than separate to, the research process.
Research, like all other human endeavours, needs to be instigated by individuals and teams
with diverse identities and experiences, to reflect the needs and interests of all in society.
Across much of the global South we see the emergence of a new generation of committed
feminist scholars, and Gender and Development remains a key outlet in opening up spaces
for diverse feminist voices to be heard.
Emerging researchers are building on a literature and a history – or ‘herstory’ – of
activism inside and outside the academy, with University-based researchers joining
forces with feminists working in women’s movements and inside government and devel-
opment NGOs of all sizes. Gender inequality and women’s rights are still goals to be
achieved in the future, but it is now much less acceptable to ignore the need for gen-
der-disaggregated data in large survey research, or to make assumptions about farmers
being male, or assume women will - indeed, should - perform all the unpaid care
work in a community. Feminists of many different hues – post/decolonial thinkers, fem-
inist economists, feminist anthropologists among them – have had a profound influence
in how we think about research, the research agendas selected for funding, the methods
used, and the way findings are disseminated. But – as the writers in this issue highlight –
there is still a very long way to go to ensure international development research achieves
feminist outcomes.
418 K. JENKINS ET AL.

Equality, power, and ethics: the importance of self-reflection to feminist

researchers
As we suggested above, a critical element of the feminist research process is for feminist
researchers to reflect on their own position and location in relation to their research par-
ticipants, in this case in the global South. Every writer whose voice is included in this issue
considers this question, sharing their self-reflections on who they are and how their lives
have shaped the ways they see and understand the world around them. While earlier gen-
erations of researchers in both the natural and social sciences strove to attain ‘objectivity’,
seeing the idea that they may be biased as a flaw and something to be challenged – and
denied – feminist researchers reject the idea that objectivity is attainable, seeing it instead
as important to develop as sophisticated a sense of their own biases as is possible.
Feminists’ focus on these issues has put them at the forefront of research ethics and
allied them to proponents of participatory, iconoclastic approaches to research1, challen-
ging notions of development as something done by experts and highly educated pro-
fessionals, to people in so-called developing countries who lack material resources and
essential services. Such participatory approaches, at their best, open up the possibility of
developing research that responds to, and emerges from, the needs of marginalised groups
and communities, involving them in conceiving and undertaking research that they and
their allies can deploy to effect meaningful change on the ground.
Feminist praxis2demands that we try, where possible, to equalise the relationship
between researchers and the research subjects – people whose lives are being researched.
Taken to its logical conclusion, these two categories should become one and the same, with
participants undertaking action research into their own experiences and knowledge. There
may be a role for an outsider to work with them, but this relationship is far from the tra-
ditional one familiar to formally educated, technically-trained ‘experts’, who extract data
and present it in technical, often highly abstract and theoretical terms, accessible only to
others with similar levels of formal education. In these projects, the role of the outsider
may be to train participants in an unfamiliar technology that they will use to record the
data, and to work with them to develop appropriate, context specific analytical tools to
make sense of it. The outsider may also facilitate access to decision-makers – for example,
government officials in charge of budgets who could change women’s lives for the better if
they are exposed to the research findings.
In this issue, several authors discuss experiences of this kind where the research data
itself – and the direction the project takes as the data mounts up - is determined and con-
trolled by the research participants. The role of the researcher transforms from an expert
harvesting ‘raw data’, to an enabler of a project where participants themselves explore and
analyse their knowledge, creating a finished ‘product’ to share, aiming to further their own
priorities through influencing power-holders and decision-makers. In her article, Elsa Oli-
veira offers a personal reflection on the journey she took into research with sex worker
migrants in South Africa, where she uses participatory arts-based methods:
What I most enjoy about the research process is the opportunity to listen to stories, and the possi-
bility of making a difference through active listening and witnessing. In my opinion, feminist and
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 419

participatory research traditions facilitate communication and exchange, and have values that
extend beyond simply expanding academic knowledge. We should therefore not treat academic
work as constitutively different from activism, but rather conceptualise research processes as political
practices
(this issue, 524)

Leva Rouhani’s article discusses the experience of working with rural women involved
in Mothers’ Associations to promote girls’ education in Benin, West Africa. Women used
digital story-telling as their method of relating and analysing their experiences and articu-
lating their priorities at workshops, advocating for adult literacy classes as well as changing
attitudes in the community about the factors that affect girls’ education. Leva Rouhani
says:
As a feminist researcher committed to collaborative methods and challenging the power dynamics
between myself and the participants, my goal was to support participants to take ownership over
the research process, giving them agency and support to identify challenges and facilitate critical
reflection
(this issue, 584)

These are inspiring case studies of innovative feminist research and practice. Yet these
writers - and others in the issue - would be first to say that it may not be possible to ever
entirely succeed in equalising the power relationship between professional researchers
located in academic, policy and practice research institutions, and women and girls living
in contexts deemed to be resource-poor, fragile and conflict affected, or in some other way
needing the intervention of international development policymakers and practitioners.
Indeed, reflecting on researchers’ own role and complicity in this global system is critical
in order to try to become part of the solution, But there is always an element of double-
think in this for anyone involved in research who is located in a position of relative power
in a university, a large development NGO, government organisation or policy think-tank.
Nevertheless, much can be achieved through respectful collaboration. While researchers
continue to work with women and girls as well as non-gender conforming groups in pov-
erty, the articles reflect the way in which feminist researchers continually challenge them-
selves in relation to rebalancing or softening such complex but unequal power relations.
Feminist lead researchers also have to consider similar issues in relation to the members
of their research teams: local staff employed as translators, research assistants, enumer-
ators, and translators. The knowledge and insights of these local staff are often appro-
priated and presented in research findings under the names of lead researchers, whose
careers flourish in an international context where their prospects and their bargaining
power as professionals are both starkly different from the local staff who have given so
much to the work. In these relationships, feminist lead researchers need to ‘walk their
talk’ on partnership and challenge the norms and conventions of research that are rooted
in colonial and post-colonial racism.
In relation to this point, the article by Dashakti Reddy, Clare Hollowell, Lona Liong
Charles Aresto, Nyaboi Grace, Mängu Bande Joseph, Joseph Aleu Mayen Ker, Jane
Lado and Kiden Mary in this issue offers interesting insights into the need to ensure
420 K. JENKINS ET AL.

feminist research tools reflect an awareness of intersectionality – specifically, the ways that
culture and race intersect with feminism. The first-named writers are two ‘expatriate’
researchers who led research into gender-based violence in South Sudan. The research
relied significantly on a team of local researchers, with whom the piece is co-authored,
and the two ‘expatriate’ team leaders were keen to create spaces for the research team
to collectively address the possible stress induced by the experience of researching GBV
in South Sudan. Yet local researchers‘ ways of dealing with this stress were very different.
Instead of using the spaces created for sharing emotional responses as they were intended,
local researchers saw them as valuable for building professionalism, enabling them to
respond appropriately to the traumatising stories they heard. The article emphasises
that feminist principles, tools and practices cannot be taken-for-granted but also need
to be interrogated from a critical perspective, fully conscious that they may reflect ways
of thinking that fail to respond to the realities of local researchers. Once again, we are
reminded of the importance of closing the distance between researchers, research partici-
pants and research support staff, a point also taken up by Loksee Leung, Stephanie Mie-
dema, Xian Warner, Sarah Homan, and Emma Fulu in their article in this issue. They
emphasise that their feminist principles extended to tackling under-representation of
women in researcher roles through prioritising the use of women local researchers, and
providing extensive training to their collaborators on the ground.

Researching sensitive issues from a feminist perspective

Because the ‘personal is political’, and many of the issues of most critical importance to
women concern issues that have historically been seen as private, and/or sources of stigma
or shame, a key focus of feminist researchers is to research these topics and air them,
asserting the importance of exposing them to public debate. Research into violence against
women (VAWG) and gender-based violence (GBV) is an obvious example of naming and
exploring the dimensions of a social issue affecting all women, whether or not they directly
experience this violence themselves; knowledge that it is a possibility shapes women’s and
girls’ lives in countless ways. The ramifications of researching VAWG in a fragile, conflict-
affected context is discussed in this issue by Dashakti Reddy et al, who focus particularly
on the impact on local researchers, as described in the last section.
Mirna Guha researches the lives of women formerly and currently involved in sex work
in Kolkata, India. Mirna Guha came from a development practitioner perspective to her
academic research. She considers the ways in which insider:outsider distinctions are
often blurred, and the multiple, overlapping positionalities that we all occupy as research-
ers, a theme that cuts across all the papers in this issue. Her article begins with a discussion
of the exclusion of sex workers from the mainstream feminist movement, and their mar-
ginalisation from policy discussions on VAWG. Perspectives on women selling sex are, as
she says, ‘sharply divided’ in feminist movements from Anglo-American traditions – and
many feminists with that heritage are currently working in international development.
Some radical feminists see the act of a man purchasing the use of a woman’s body as a
patriarchal act of dominance: a form of violence against women. For other feminists,
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 421

sex work is just that: work undertaken by women whose right to choose to do this should
not be in question. In international development, policies and programming reflect both
these positions.
The nuanced accounts of women sex workers are critical to better inform those with
responsibility and power to determine policies around sex work. But it is a challenge to
present these in ways that allow the diversity and range of views of different individuals
and groups to cut through. One response is to consciously choose research methods
which allow for sustained narrative voice from participants, who can then tell their stories
in their own words. For Mirna Guha, using life histories within an open-ended ethno-
graphic research approach allowed the possibility:
… to move away from standard topics associated with sex work. It also allows women in sex work to
share their accounts of the dynamism and fluidity within their lives, within and before/after sex
work.
(this issue, 506)

Spending time with women, ‘ethnographically “hanging out”’ ( ibid.) preceded more
formal interviews, to build trust and rapport with them. Women expressed surprise
that the conversations and interviews touched on subjects and came from angles that
they did not expect from researchers. Many communities in the global South are well-
acquainted with social science researchers scrutinising their lives, but many of the topics
that feminists ask about – sex, violence, the drudgery of unpaid care work and women’s
thoughts on marriage and other topics – are still unexpected topics to be expected to dis-
cuss with anyone beyond close friends and neighbours. Feminist principles of equality and
reciprocity informed Mirna Guha’s decision to make the process of research questioning a
two-way one. The women involved in her research quizzed her on issues of her own per-
sonal life. Teasing, cracking jokes, and smoking together created a relationship that sub-
verted the power dynamics of traditional interviewing.
Asking questions about sensitive subjects is just one aspect of deciding how to pro-
duce research that minimises harm to respondents. Crucially, Mirna Guha also reminds
us of the need to sometimes be silent as researchers, and also the importance of establish-
ing boundaries that ensure both our participants’ and our own wellbeing. A related issue
is around the use of pseudonyms and anonymity in the writing up of research. In her
article, Rebecca Gordon compares the advice given to her by the authorities at her uni-
versity with her own thinking about the question of anonymising the views of women
she interviewed in Bihar, India. ‘Why would I want to be anonymous?’ asked one par-
ticipant, wanting to have her words included together with her name. Her views would
then be clearly her own.
As Rebecca Gordon says, feminist researchers anxious not to appropriate knowledge may
well feel that giving credit to research participants by naming them is a positive thing. What
emerges here is the acknowledgement that the ethical standards to which we must strictly
adhere if we are to have projects ‘approved’ by our institutions are not always appropriate
in the field. Instead, issues are best resolved by paying adequate attention to the views of
women involved in the research, and giving them decision-making power, along with
422 K. JENKINS ET AL.

sufficient information for them to be fully informed about the consequences of these
decisions. As Elsa Oliveira (this issue) observes of her own project’s process:
It is about making sure that participants have a say in the ways they are represented, and how the
research unfolds, but also at the same time, it is about recognising that it may not be equitable to
assume that participants have the same investment or interest in research and/or its significance and
value.
(this issue, 536)

‘Quant. versus qual.’: feminist researchers need both!

Qualitative research methods – including case studies, life histories, participant obser-
vation and focus group discussions, as well as innovative digital and arts-based methods
used by Elsa Oliviera and Leva Rouhani (both in this issue) – have the ability to generate
rich and nuanced data, often allowing data collection to evolve over time, as the
researcher interacts with participants. Such approaches enable the gradual revelation
of experiences, and the elicitation of data that both foregrounds the diversity of individ-
ual experience and also allows the researcher to develop an understanding of a collective
or typical experience amongst a particular group. In short, qualitative research keeps the
attention on individual human experiences, with the similarities and differences between
them in sharp focus.
This is not, however, to undermine the strategic value of employing quantitative
methods. This is also valuable, but in a different way. In their article in this issue, Loksee
Leung et al. provide an antidote to any argument that good feminist research is only quali-
tative. Theirs is a compelling account of the worth and many uses of quantitative research
when placed in feminist hands, with methods selected for a particular reason, and aug-
mented with equally carefully-selected qualitative methods. Both ‘quant’ and ‘qual’ have
unique contributions to make.
An example is the widely-used ‘one in three’ statistic on global VAWG. This is dis-
cussed by Loksee Leung et al. in their account of the gradual progress of VAWG up global
policy agendas. Yet the one in three figure is frequently pilloried for failing to reveal the
variety of different forms of VAWG, and failing to inform about the causes. Quantitative
data is also often critiqued by feminists because whilst it is seen by many to be objective
and reliable, there is still subjectivity involved in its creation, and it can over-simplify what
are often complex social problems.
Whilst this interpretation reflects, in our view, a failure to understand the limitations of
quantitative data and use it appropriately, it is still useful and necessary, particularly in
establishing the intensity and scale of pressing gender inequalities, and communicating
these to diverse audiences, as Loksee Leung et al. demonstrate. The rather simplistic
and polarised ‘quant. versus qual.’ debate appears increasingly out of date to feminists,
who are innovating and piloting mixed-method research. Qualitative and quantitative
research can be used alongside and integrated with each other: qualitative data can now
be transformed into quantitative data (with varying degrees of success, say feminists),
and qualitative methods used to illuminate issues raised by quantitative findings.
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 423

In just the same way that quantitative research can be criticised for failing to reveal
difference and nuance, qualitative research is criticised often for failing to create data
that suggest ways of addressing a concern like VAWG. Yet this criticism, too, presents
a partial picture. Qualitative research does not only focus on difference, variation and
nuance, but also reveals the commonalities between participants’ experiences. The funda-
mental cause of VAWG is patriarchal power and gender inequality, and research into all
contexts reveals this. If patriarchal social norms permit – even encourage – VAWG, then
feminist approaches to deal with the global pandemic of VAWG need to be developed and
funded. Quantitative methods are used by feminist researchers whose findings underpin
significant shifts in thinking about issues of critical importance to millions of women.
With quantitative statistics on prevalence and case studies from qualitative research
both influencing decision-makers, action is possible, as Loksee Leung et al. demonstrate.

Research accounts from development practitioners

Several of the articles in this issue come from feminist development practitioners, providing
valuable critical insight into how it feels to be a feminist researcher in an organisation that deli-
vers a programme of planned interventions aiming to have a positive and empowering effect
on the lives of women and girls, often accompanied by advocacy and influencing work that
aims to dismantle structural inequality to realise human development worthy of the name.
Alejandra Pineda and Sophie Purdue’s article explores how the International Women’s
Development Agency (IWDA) and its partner organisations have aimed to embed feminist
values in the research they undertake. It provides two case studies of research projects in Asia
Pacific, focusing on the enablers and barriers to women’s leadership. In true feminist style, the
projects focus on the ‘private’ factors that affect women would-be leaders, as well as ‘public’
factors. While women’s leadership is not a conventionally ‘sensitive’ subject, since it is about
public participation in community and society, the range of gender-specific factors that affect
women’s ability to take on these leadership roles cross the public-private divide.
IWDA’s article is fascinating in its discussion of the importance of working with local
women’s rights organisations, which offer a feminist but locally grounded perspective on
their research questions. In one of the two initiatives discussed, the Women’s Leadership
Pathways project, a mixed-method approach is being used and an international consul-
tancy offers local feminists training in technical skills and mentorship, which
…builds the skills and capabilities of these individuals and organisations to produce their own
knowledge and baseline evidence to inform their work and future programming.
(this issue, 454)

Critically, these local co-researchers were involved in, and consulted on, the research
design, but the analysis (which is still to be done, at the time of writing,) will also be a col-
laborative effort, involving all the co-researchers. One organisation involved, United Sis-
terhood in Cambodia, has identified the research as feminist for these reasons. This
evaluation from a feminist women’s organisation is probably the best accolade such a pro-
ject can hope for.
424 K. JENKINS ET AL.

Also included here is an article from Michelle Lokot, who was formerly a humanitarian
worker who is currently undertaking academic research into humanitarian practice. Her
article focuses on the issue of power. She argues that while humanitarian practitioners
have begun to focus much more than previously on the power hierarchies that shape
women’s lives before, during and after humanitarian crises, they have reflected less than
they need to on the power relations they themselves perpetuate through monitoring
and evaluating the impact of their work on refugee populations.
Michelle Lokot suggests that feminist analysis can offer insights into power imbalances
between researchers and refugee communities, and research informed by feminist values
can offer potential to address them. She notes that the concerns she raises are not unique
to feminist approaches, however, and this is an important point to make as we near the
end of our introduction to this issue. Literature has long criticised the power hierarchies
within humanitarian – and international development – agencies, and between them and
the communities they exist to serve. Yet Michelle Lokot highlights the ways the sector has
evolved, and the pressures on monitoring and evaluation teams. It is particularly hard to
work in empowering and participatory ways with urgent pressures to demonstrate positive
impact in short time-frames, defined by funding availability rather than need on the
ground over the long term.
These issues are familiar to all feminist development practitioners, and also come to
the fore in Andrea Azevedo, Alexia Pretari and Rosa Wilson Garwood’s article reflecting
on their experiences as feminists working in Oxfam. Theirs is an account of personal
and professional commitment to real change for women and girls directly coming
into contact with Oxfam programmes and projects. They offer an honest and revealing
insight into programming planning, monitoring, and evaluations, using feminist
methods to reflect on complex realities and unexpected outcomes. Their article reveals
the challenges of embedding feminist values in research across a large organisation.
Their emphasis on revealing what is, rather than what was hoped for, is critical – not
only for the women and girls involved in development programming, but for improving
Oxfam’s future programming, creating a virtuous circle. This article - like the other by
Loksee Leung et al., both show specific challenges facing feminist researchers in the pro-
gramme monitoring, evaluation and learning teams of development organisations. Ade-
quate time and resources are critical if we are to comprehensively embed feminist values
in research.

Conclusion
Can we offer a summary of the key characteristics of feminist values in research to con-
clude this introduction to the issue? Perhaps the most important are goals of social trans-
formation; an emphasis on recognising researcher positionality and subjectivity as integral
to feminist research; involvement of ‘the researched’ in the process that calls for self-reflex-
ive and participatory approaches; and an emphasis on the importance of research methods
that reveal complexity and nuance, with a focus on valuing individuals and ensuring that
both the researcher and the research participants retain their human faces and voices,
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 425

rather than being subsumed by numerical averages and statistics at a level of abstraction
where human experience is rendered invisible.
Taken together, the articles in this issue also exemplify the work that feminist research-
ers must do as ‘translators’, translating our feminist values across cultures, contexts, insti-
tutions and languages. Doing this effectively, and sensitively, is essential to the success of
feminist research and its ability to make a difference to the lives of marginalised women,
girls and gender non-conforming groups in the global South. Above all, we argue for the
importance of recognising and unpacking the challenges and tensions around embedding
feminist values in our research processes and outcomes, from organisational challenges to
ethical ‘messiness’. However, we also embrace such challenges as part and parcel of what it
means to do feminist research well, rather than seeing these as problems to be ‘solved’.

Notes
1. For more information, see Robert Chambers’ 1994 article reviewing the motivations and
approaches of ‘participatory development’. His (1997) book Whose reality counts? Putting the
Last First is a classic source on his own thinking about power, international development, knowl-
edge and research.
2. Feminist praxis can be summarised as follows: praxis (that is, the performance of an action)
inspired by a belief system drawing on principles of mutual nurturing and care, non-violence,
and collective action where small groups work for change, paying attention to the importance
of community, reciprocity, self-reflection, and personal development over time.

Notes on contributors
Katy Jenkins is Associate Professor of International Development, Centre for International Develop-
ment, Northumbria University, UK. She is co-convenor of the Women in Development Study Group
of the UK Development Studies Association. Email: [email protected]. Postal address:
Centre for International Development, Squires Building, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon
Tyne, NE1 8ST.
Lata Narayanaswamy is Lecturer in International Development at the Centre for Politics and Inter-
national Studies (POLIS), and Co-Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Development (CGD) at
the University of Leeds, UK. She is co-convenor of the Women in Development Study Group of the
UK Development Studies Association. Email: [email protected]
Caroline Sweetman is Editor of Gender & Development.

References
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123456789/1761/rc81a.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (last checked 8 October 2019)
Sen, Gita and Caren Grown (1988) Development Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s
Perspectives, London: Earthscan, https://www.dawnnet.org/sites/default/files/articles/devt_crisesalt_
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