1. Introduction -- Three challenges to feminist methodology -- What is gender? -- What is feminism in the twenty-first century? -- Are feminists women? -- What is methodology in social research? -- Is feminist methodology distinctively feminist? -- The structure of the book --
PART I FEMINISM'S ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS -- 2 Reason, science and progress: feminism's Enlightenment -- inheritance -- Introduction -- Enlightenment thought -- Reason, science and progress: how Enlightenment thought has -- shaped feminist approaches to methodology -- Modem humanism -- The long shadow of the Enlightenment: challenges and -- contradictions at the roots of modem feminist methodology -- Conclusion --
3 Can feminists tell the truth? Challenges of -- scientific method -- Introduction -- Feminist research as a quest for valid knowledge of social -- realities by a knowing subject -- Feminist objections to scientific method in social research -- Objectivity, subjectivity, relativism: competing paths to truth -- Conclusion --
4 From truth/reality to knowledge/power: taking a feminist -- standpoint -- Introduction -- The knowing feminist at the limits of modern methodology -- A methodological continuum: slipping and sliding on -- Haraway's greasy pole -- What is a feminist standpoint? -- Nancy Hartsock: achieving a feminist standpoint as a vantage -- point on male supremacy -- Dorothy Smith: taking women's standpoint; beginning in -- experience -- What problems remain? -- Conclusion -- PART II FREEDOM, FRAGMENTATION AND RESISTANCE --
5 Escape from epistemology? The impact of postmodern -- thought on feminist methodology -- Introduction -- Postmodern thought -- Postmodern freedoms: sweeping away the foundations of -- feminist methodology -- Thus far but no further? Feminist resistance to postmodern -- thought -- Conclusion --
6 Researching 'others': feminist methodology and the -- politics of difference -- Introduction -- Confronting difference in feminist social research -- Being different: the constitution of 'otherness' -- Being different: experiencing and resisting 'otherness' -- Complications of difference -- The politics of representing 'others': the privileged researcher -- The power of interpretation: data analysis -- Reflexivity in the research process -- Conclusion --
7 Knowledge, experience and reality: justifying feminist -- connections -- Introduction -- The case against taking experience as a source of knowledge -- A case for taking experience as a source of knowledge -- The difficulties of connecting experience and material realities -- Should feminists specify criteria of validity? -- The idea of a feminist epistemic community -- Conclusion -
PART III MEETING CHALLENGES, MAKING CHOICES -
8 Choices and decisions: doing a feminist research project -- Introduction -- What makes social research feminist? -- The research process -- Situating your research question -- Face to face with the research: data production -- Face to face with the researched: putting reflexivity into practice -- Face to face with the data: analysis and conclusions -- Face to face with a blank sheet: writing up