Maitri es recién estrenada como Catedrática en el Departamento de Inglés, o sea, estamos muy contentas de anunciar que le han por fin concedido el título de Catedrática en el Departamento de Inglés de la Universidad de Kelaña.
Empezó su carrera 200 en 1990 en la Universidad de Peradenilla y ha sido profesoras invitadas en diferentes universidades nacionales e internacionales,
en partes docencias en diferentes asignaturas, entre las cuales teorías y prácticas literarias críticas, en específico teoría feminista,
análisis crítico, poesía y ficción de mujeres, el género en la literatura, literatura de celanca contemporánea y metodología en investigación feminista.
Sus investigaciones son multidisciplinares, o sea que nos viene como Daniel Dido en estas jornadas, y se centran en diferentes temas, entre los cuales la posibilidad de las mujeres de celanca,
la teoría y la metodología de investigación feminista crítica, la violencia sexual y la violencia en las mujeres en general,
las relaciones de género en el sector privado, en organizaciones y en diferentes espacios laborales, incluyendo entre otros los espacios de educación superior,
en el que sabemos que hay también muchas discriminaciones de género todavía, en el campo del desarrollo y mujeres o desarrollo y género.
Como metodológica feminista participa de la elaboración de estrategia y política para la incorporación de la perspectiva de género en diferentes ONGs y organizaciones de mujeres,
así como en el sector privado, en las universidades y en la gestión de catástrofe.
Forma parte del Women's Education and Raising Center y es miembro del Ethics Research Committee de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Colombo.
Algunos de sus libros son From Theory to Action, Women's Gender and Development del año 2000,
Behind Glass Selling and Brickwall's Genders at the Workplace del 2006,
y finalmente Feminist Reservatology, Making Meaning of Meaning Making, del 2009 que ha publicado con Sage.
Estamos además particularmente contenta de que esté aquí, porque demasiadas veces, incluso si no lo queremos,
tenemos la tendencia a reproducir un contexto cultural bastante cerrado,
y nuestros referentes suelen ser Europa, sobre todo Inglaterra, Estados Unidos y como mucho Latinoamérica,
aquí en España, porque, claro, hay bastante contacto y por cuestiones también de lengua, es fácil.
Y por lo tanto nos complace en un modo particular, poder tener también la experiencia de una mujer como Maity,
porque creemos que ampliar perspectivas, especialmente teniendo en cuenta que la ciencia no solo es patriarcal o heteropatriarcal,
sino es también extremamente occidental nuestra ciencia,
y entonces creemos que podemos aprender mucho de quien también proviene de otros contextos
y tiene posibilidades de mirar también desde diferentes puntos de vista.
Por esta razón creemos que nos vamos a enriquecernos mucho con esta presentación,
y yo creo que voy a dejar aquí agradecerle muchísimo y dejamos directamente la palabra Maitri.
Gracias a todas también por escuchar.
May I congratulate and thank S-I-M-R-E-F for organizing the school and Barbara in particular,
and also focusing on data analysis, an often neglected area of feminist research methodology.
Allow me to thank you for inviting me to travel all the way from Sri Lanka to give this speech.
It is an unanticipated honor.
I am looking forward to the intellectual deliberations and debates of the next two days with great enthusiasm
and hope to contribute and learn much from the experience about this new and exciting field of study
that we are all in the forefront of.
As feminists I have no doubt that this would lead to long time bonds of sisterhood
and it will be a great opportunity to transcend national, cultural and language boundaries.
Usually when I tell people that I am working on feminist research methodology,
I provoke an array of responses.
They range from a slight blankness at the idea of working on feminism
to the presumed boredom of working on methodology,
from a straightforward grasp of methods to the incomprehension of obscurity.
On the other hand, when Barbara and I discussed what I was going to be talking at this school on email,
I felt a deep resonance because we were immediately on the same wavelength.
Since most of you are familiar with feminist research methodology,
in this sense I may not face the same challenges as before,
but I think I would also need to keep you interested and stimulated during the next hour or so,
then that is quite a challenge.
One objective of my speech today will be to provide an overview of arguments
for adopting feminist research methodology in researching.
However, it is not possible to do so without also considering the question,
what is feminist research methodology?
Is it simply a straightforward question of research methods?
Or does feminist research methodology refer to analysis?
Or is it an issue of theory and practice relating to the political aspirations and ethical safeguards of research?
Or perhaps feminist research methodology today become a specialty,
a new branch of learning, and perhaps even a discipline.
Let me go to my objectives.
I find out that over the years feminist research methodology has been extensively defined,
comprehensively demarcated, hotly debated, and vigorously redefined in global academia.
In the following sections I will strive to give you an overview of feminist research methodology.
My second objective in the paper is to consider some of the challenges
and epistemological assumptions of feminist research methodology,
particularly by non-Western feminists and especially South Asians.
So, we need to then consider the following questions.
What are some of the common histories and experiences, feminist understandings and objectives
reúne by us when doing feminist research? What are some of the differences?
How can these dominant methodological issues of feminism be conceptualized and understood?
Admittedly, now these are very broad generalized questions
and it's quite, understandably, quite a challenge given the assumptions implicit in separating
local from the global, the Western from the non-Western, and other methodologies.
Or, for that matter, in distinguishing transitional from developed nations,
or in considering both the possibilities of differences and conflicts,
as well as the commonalities and unities within regions.
Thank you, Barbara. So, to begin with, I have identified and conceptualized
some of the dominant strands of feminist research methodology
according to the following categories or frames,
despite a kind of a postmodern aversion towards classifications.
This is because they continue to be thematically of interest
for feminist researchers, for methodologists, for epistemologists, and theorists.
They relate to, firstly, discussions about the ways in which the subjectivity
of the feminist researcher engages and interacts with the research process.
Then, feminist considerations of the unstable and often conflated
multiple realities of life and researching, in other words, ontology.
Assumptions, understandings, and justifications by feminists about knowledge, epistemology.
Feminist methods that are applied to collect, construct, analyze,
deconstruct data on the topic. Feminist theorizations applied or made
that generalize, specify, or deconstruct feminist research interests.
And finally, feminist ethical and political inferences about the research process,
including the methods employed.
So, feminist subjectivities. If I may begin by defining subjectivity,
subjectivity refers to the consciousness of the internal self
in terms of thoughts, emotions, experiences, beliefs, assumptions, intentions,
the imagination, and consciousness of the self and others,
as well as external identities imposed by society.
Consequently, it is not incorrect to state that feminism begins with a consciousness in women,
a consciousness of women's subjectivities as individual women,
and as a collective, in other words, of women becoming conscious of themselves as women.
And why is subjectivity important to feminist research methodology?
Because at the core of feminist research methodology is the political consciousness
of the self as a woman, in the early days as a victimized woman,
and then later as an agent of resistance or a subject of self-determination.
Now, I think, Barbara, you went into that a little bit in your talk about the idea
of the politics of feminist research methodology.
So, at the very foundational level then, feminist subjectivities can be conceptualized
in two ways. First, as the consciousness of the self as a constituent member
of women as a collective, and second, as the awareness of the self as a biological gendered woman,
in other words, as an individual.
Because often the concept of women in the plural was a politicized category
in feminist discourses used for aspirational objectives in research,
irrespective of the differences between and amongst groups of women.
However, the discursive representation of women as an illusory mass was soon critiqued
as being simplistic and essentialist.
For example, as Nigerian feminist Oyevumi points out,
there was no pre-existing group of women characterized by shared interest,
desires or social position in Yoruba land before its encounter with the West.
Furthermore, not all societies make the distinction between men and women
their primary form of social ordering.
Social ordering could, for instance, take place according to age hierarchies.
Nonetheless, the homogeneous overarching perception of women as women
served to institute women not only as a category of analysis,
but also as a subject position when it comes to feminist research methodology.
Similarly, the concept of the woman or a woman in the singular
is also a co-assumption in feminist research methodology
because of the gaps, the anomalies, the stereotypes and misrepresentations
in many existing conceptualization of the woman in the singular.
In this context, the woman is firstly considered as a biological entity
essentially based on sight and secondly as a social construction
as pointed out by Simone Dubois and others
and the consciousness of subjectivity as a woman
in relation to a physical body has been extensively theorized.
For instance, a corporeal feminist have identified the biological differences
between the man and the woman as a central cause for male control of women.
For feminists like Firestone, pre-production in particular
was a bodily sight of inequality in the woman
along with sexuality and sexual orientation.
On the other hand, difference feminists have affirmed, valorized
and also celebrated bodily differences as a source of power.
Helen C. Sue talks of an ecriture feminine or feminine writing
which is symbolic of the woman's body
and Carol Gilligan argues for the woman's unique moral development
as opposed to the man.
These understandings of subjectivity
and let's not forget that subjectivity is also part and parcel of ontology
were founded on the idea of sexual differences as natural and as permanent.
They have therefore resulted in oppositional, static,
stereotyped representations of the woman.
Another highly influential view of subjectivity
as a woman was founded on the idea of gender as a social and cultural division
by writers like Anne Oakley.
Thus sex role feminists underrated the biological
and argued that gender divisions were therefore artificial and changeable.
They theorized that socialization processes were the sources of gender inequalities
and that transformations in social structures and processes
could therefore lead to gender equity and equality.
But paradoxically, it is possible that even social constructionist arguments of gender
may have served to render women and men as passive objects.
This is because of very rigid conceptualizations
of structural and ideological forces of social conditioning
that could compromise any ideas of personal agency.
In response to these assumptions of women's subjectivity
as static or accomplished or as achieved,
feminists like Judith Butler theorized of gender as performativity,
thereby focusing on the identity politics of subjectivity.
She's Butler particularly saw sex and gender as a continuous process
that was being constantly constructed and sustained by individuals
through repetitions, rituals and performances.
It is possible then to see that a significant volume
of ontological representations and constructions of the women in research
relies on both social constructivism and biological determinism.
These unify centuries old ontological assumptions
made by Plato to Descartes to Beyond
in western philosophy of a mind and body bifurcation.
Fuelling these debates further are completely different
ontological perspectives on subjectivity,
which argue that the concept of biology itself
is arbitrary and socially constructed.
In other words, that things that are seen as natural
and predetermined such as biological differences
are merely conceptualized as such and classified as such.
In this understanding, both sex and gender differences
are seen as social constructs and therefore partial to change.
Underlying these conceptualizations of the woman is a supposition
often based on notions of homosexuality,
as argued by Adrian Risch,
and of the woman's relationship to the man
generally as the binary opposite.
As we all know, this assumption reinforces
heterosexuality as a norm,
as opposed to other sexual orientations,
despite the historical, social, cultural
and discursive production of the variation in sexualities.
In response, lesbian feminists have advocated
the abandonment of compulsory heterosexuality.
Feminists like Risch have conceptualized
a lesbian continuum
by including all women-centered experiences of women
devoid of a sexual focus.
While the politics of sexuality
was seen as key to gendered politicized subject positions,
there were also other intersections in subjectivity
that have become key to feminist research methodology.
Standpoint theory has argued
out the significance of subjectivities
located in class, race, ethnicity,
indigenous groups, castes, language, geography, age,
transgender, disability,
the non-western, postcolonialism and nationalism.
Here an understanding of Homi Baba's hybridity
is useful in engaging not only with the pluralisms
of subjectivities,
but also the cross cuts and intersections,
overlaps and simultaneity,
the fragments, arbitrariness
and continuing evolution of feminist subjectivities.
By and large, the above possibilities
also convey the extent to which
subjectivity is situated in multiple and often contradictory fields of power.
For the main part, despite their abstractness,
the discursive concepts of women and women
have been partially successful
in promoting concrete, historically located,
social, psychological and cultural understandings
of the experiences of being women, women,
which is a fundamental aspect of feminist research methodology.
Yet it must be noted that I have conceptualized feminist subjectivities
as a specific category for the purpose of this speech.
Feminist subjectivities can be equally conceptualized
as facets of ontology and epistemology
or as feminist theory as being part of ethics and politics
and as a method of analysis.
At another level,
let me talk about feminist ontologies.
Feminists have engaged,
feminist research methodology
involves considerations of the unstable
and often conflated multiple realities of life, ontology,
in other words.
Ontology refers to consciousness of the realities of the self
and understandings of the forms, nature or aspects of reality
which impinge on a part of or motivate research processes.
Feminists have engaged with ontology
because of their recognition of the relative absence of women
in most versions of realities.
Rampant androcentrism,
even when or where women were present,
unconscious assumptions of the male as the norm,
the dominance of male perspectives and bias
and of pervasive sexism in numerous knowledge domains and accounts.
This understanding led to filling gaps vis-à-vis women,
a highly compensatory political act of correcting epistemological absences
or silences and deficiencies or misrepresentations
in the sciences, social sciences, history, development, arts,
literature, culture and family.
Yet throughout history,
feminists have given evidence of feminist observations
and constructions of realities from time to time.
In the 1970s,
such a focus on women
gained momentum in African Asian and South American countries
with the global intervention of the United Nations
and local initiatives by women.
These led to reports on the status of women
as well as other seminal studies,
especially on development issues.
They span women's education, economic contribution,
political participation, health legislation,
agriculture and households as well as country-specific issues.
Though less keen to attribute blame
for the condition and oppression of women
than their western counterparts,
they nevertheless presented panoramic views
of women's situations in various fields of activity.
From a methodological perspective,
these were political attempts to promote the women's side of the coin
and thereby reverse the male as a norm
and concentric perceptions of life.
Alongside these ontologies of what I call the situation of women,
are ontologies of causality.
Usually these were conceptualized
as monocourses of women's oppression,
such as patriarchy, reproduction, male violence,
the male psyche, unpaid labor,
compulsory heterosexuality and so on.
Aside from which, historical research
mapped women's oppression as spanning centuries of civilization
and assumed common overarching narratives of women's oppression.
In contrast, postmodern culturalists
and postcolonial approaches established experiential ontologies
that argued for the specificities of women's experiencers
due to specificities of national context,
cultural context and subjective context.
I'd like to illustrate by giving a list of examples.
Take the examples of the historical dual subjugation of black women
in USA and UAK,
or the imperialist postcolonial realities of denial and oppression
in neo-colonial states of India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya and so on.
Or the marginalization of indigenous women in countries like the USA,
Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc.
Take feminist engagements with the nation-state
as a result of state-sponsored nationalisms,
communalisms and religious fundamentalisms,
generally at the expense of women.
Take the periodic militarization and war situations
of the latter half of the 20th century in countries like Bosnia,
Pakistan, India, Ireland, Israel, South Africa and Sri Lanka
long-drawn repercussions of women as victims and agents.
Take feminist concerns of neoliberalizations, globalizations,
development and displacements,
as well as migration and diaspora,
especially in urban cities of the West.
Or take the dominant subjectivity-based realities of the West
that revolve around the politics relating to the body or being,
such as lesbianism, transgendering, abortion, weight issues,
pornography, disability and illness.
Feminist research methodology can also be seen
as founded on ontologies of change,
especially in transitional countries.
Understandings of women, these are we,
the development of nations hold a key position,
especially in relation to the epistemologies
of women in development with
and gender and development-gad methodologies.
But by the 1980s, with's assumption
about adding women in were exposed
as women became compartmentalized, marginalized
and populated by patriarchal exigencies
and development stereotypes.
So the aspirational myths,
in addition, the aspirational myths of gender equality
and equity pertaining to the economic empowerment
and political participation of women
from the 1970s onwards that drove research,
under judicious critique, in the 2000s,
especially in the face of religious fundamentalisms
and when coopted by neoliberal forces,
as was the case in India.
The instrumentalization of gender
through the development of methodological tools
for gender mainstreaming, measurement and evaluation
has had mixed results,
especially within institutions.
It has highlighted the processes
of implementation at the expense of outcomes
while granting limited consciousness
within institutional spheres.
A re-visualization of realities
according to alternative ontologies
are also part of feminist projects of change.
Early work, which included women-centered
domestic formations and lifestyles
in imaginary women's communities,
as envisaged by Auba,
for example, was important for lesbian
and separatist feminism.
Other imaginaries were diverse
and spanned from the late Sara Radick's
visualization of the possibilities
of maternal peace politics
to Vandana Shiva's re-evaluation
of the discipline of biology
from the intersecting standpoints
of feminism from ecology and the Third World.
These transformative elements in ontologies
are based largely on faith
in the human capacity for change,
assumptions about feminist agency
and understandings of course and effect.
En contrast, postmodern conceptualizations
of realities focused on anti-foundations,
on fragmentations, on pragmatisms,
on instabilites, localizations and insecurities.
These, of course, thwarted the certainty,
the consistency, the stability
and the foundationality of master narratives
of women's oppression.
A foundational concept such as gender relations,
for example, was no longer a universal
or homogenous category
under postmodernist interest.
Rather, it became relational and context-bound
and take the concept of the woman.
This, too, was no longer a unitary category
in conceptualizing change,
but a unifying one for purposes
of strategic essentialism,
while women's alliances and solidarity
were re-theorized in terms of
politics of identification,
instead of a politics of identity
by feminists like Teresita de Laurentes,
Abtar Brak and Mary Menad.
Given the diversity composed
and surfaced by feminisms globally,
and despite the political threats
posed to feminisms through the undermining
of a fundamental cause
or a grand narrative of women's
abondination worldwide,
by postmodernisms,
feminists have found it expedient
to incorporate postmodern visualizations
in their understandings of ontologies.
This is because postmodern perspectives
can provide alternative understandings
of feminist controversies
and prevent tendencies towards over-simplification,
essentialism, homogenizing and stereotyping.
Thus irrespective of whether these are modernist
or postmodernist conceptualizations,
feminist ontology is fundamental
to feminist research methodology.
When these conceptualizations
of realities get transformed into
clearizations or analytical frameworks
or justifications of knowledge
or validation of research,
they then become epistemology,
which is what I would like to look at next.
Subtítulos por la comunidad de Amara.org
