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Doing research is a process that involves an on-going series of decisions and choices. Overall, feminist research is uniquely feminist because it is feminist beliefs and concerns that act as the guiding framework to the research process. Methodologically, feminist research differs from traditional research for three reasons. It actively seeks to remove the power imbalance between research and subject; it is be politically motivated and has a major role in changing social inequality; and it begins with the standpoints and experiences of women.

In social science research, the researcher has confidence that the material is unbiased in accurately representing social reality. In quantitative research, this is assessed in terms of objectivity, maintaining a space between the researched and the researched so that the researcher is not influenced by the research process. In qualitative research, neutrality is possible by removing the distance between the researcher and the participant to ensure biases the researcher brings into the research are acknowledged and that the participant can confirm the validity of the depiction of their experience and social reality. As an illustration, with participatory research, the goal is the inclusion of the participant’s perspective and voice in all aspects of the research process. “Participatory research proposes returning to ordinary people the power to participate in knowledge creation, the power that results from such creation, and the power to utilize knowledge” (Maguire, 1987, p. 39). The assumption behind this agenda is that the material revealed will be more accurate and objective in representing the reality of the social experience and situation. By including the participants in the process, it is felt that the data will be unbiased and more truthful in representing the event in agreement

With the participant. In both instances, the overall objective for social science research is for the data to be accurate and representative of the situation.

At the heart of it, both qualitative and quantitative research shares a common methodological and epistemological agenda: control. In quantitative research, the element of control is suggested by the belief that there are variables that must be controlled. This is grounded in the epistemological base of objectivity and neutrality. Without control of the research, bias will appear and distort the results. In qualitative research, the researcher is seeking, through methodology, to capture the best representation of social reality. The goal of this research is to have the meaning and experience of the event conveyed in the most realist manner. The inclusion and recognition of the influence held by the researcher facilitates a greater control over the degree of accuracy of the data in representing the participant’s reality. Historical arguments have constructed social science research into different camps, qualitative and quantitative, a distinction that has come into question.

Feminist research is, by definition, research that utilizes feminist concerns and beliefs to ground the research process. Feminism takes women as its starting point, seeking to explore and uncover patriarchal social dynamics and relationships from the perspective of women. Feminism is also a commitment to social change, arising from the actions of women to refuse the patriarchal social structure as it stands in favour of a more egalitarian society. Feminism also addresses the power imbalances between women and men and between women as active agents in the world. Feminist research seeks to include feminism within the process, to focus on the meaning women give to their world while recognizing that research as a process is contained within the same patriarchal relations. Feminist research is research that uses feminist principles throughout all stages of research, from choice of topic to presentation of data. These feminist principles also inform and act as the framework guiding the decisions being made by the researcher.

This is not to suggest that feminist researchers believe that feminist research is one unified research methodology. There are many varying and diverse interpretations of what feminist research is and should be. The only agreement seems to be to have no

Agreement – to revel in the diversity and recognize that these differences facilitate and permit different knowledge’s to be put forth. To seek one feminist research method is invalid, and simply reinforces patriarchal beliefs in totalizing theory, that there exists one truth, one knowledge in the world to be objectively discovered. Feminist research is about multiple, subjective and partial truths. Black feminist writers such as bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins have strongly argued against the biases that exist in white academic feminist writing, such as class exclusion, heterosexism, racism and ethnocentrism. Feminist research can not claim to speak for all women, but can provide new knowledge grounded in the realities of women’s experiences and actively enact structural changes in the social world.