Encouraging Gender Analysis in Research Practice

Abstract

Few resources for practical teaching or fieldwork exercises exist which address gender in geographical contexts. This paper adds to teaching and fieldwork resources by describing an experience with designing and implementing a ‘gender intervention’ for a large-scale, multi-university, bilingual research project that brought together a group of (non-gender specialist) researchers and student research assistants. Providing detailed descriptions of a facilitated workshop and a field log exercise, the aim is to offer specific examples of how researchers can keep gender on the research agenda. Substantive reporting of such details also works toward an open research process that allows for debate, methodological critique and ongoing revision. This in turn contributes to maintaining a relevant and rigorous qualitative research practice within geography.

Keywords:

• Gender analysis
• feminist methodology
• feminist fieldwork and pedagogy
• feminist geography
• qualitative research
• translation

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the NRE² research team and her postdoctoral supervisor, Greg Halseth, for supporting her postdoctoral endeavours. The following people were an invaluable part of this research process: Laura Ryser, Chelan Hoffman and Shiloh Durkee. Thanks are offered to Laurel Van de Keere for her research assistance in later stages of this project. Sincere thanks are also due to Liz Bondi, Joyce Davidson, Bettina van Hoven, Helen Jarvis and Avril Maddrell for their participation in the session, Gender Interventions, at the AAG, Chicago 2006, within which the first iteration of this paper was presented. Special thanks go to the author's co-editor, Joyce Davidson. Finally, thanks to the anonymous reviewers and Avril Maddrell for their keen attention to this manuscript. Any errors of interpretation or explanation remain the author's own.

Notes

¹ The NRE² is the second phase of the New Rural Economy Project (NRE) of the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF). This project is identifying major factors contributing to capacity in rural and small-town communities, while also seeking to build community capacity to thrive in a changing rural economy (Reimer, 2006; Ryser et al., 2008).

² Madge notes that her exercise was adapted from a previous exercise (Monk, 1988). Thanks to Gail Fondahl, UNBC, for sharing her field assignment based on Madge which I have amended for assigned field trips to the shopping mall in both Northern British Columbia and Southern California. The exercise has many pedagogical benefits, including encouraging students to examine the ubiquitous geography of North American shopping malls and to consider the highly gendered and racialized elements therein.

³ The team is bilingual (French and English) and all the written materials were made available in both languages; however, I presented the oral part of the workshop in English.

⁴ Name altered.