Studying Feminist Issues: The Standpoint of the "Oppressed"

Orly Benjamin’s lecture focused on the epistemological discourse underlying feminist research, was delivered at the Mada aI-Carmel Center in “Gender and the status of women in Palestinian society” seminar (Sept. 29, 2005).

key concepts: Feminist critique, Androcentric bias, Feminist epistemology.

The lecture focuses on the relationship between theory, politics and research activity. There are some who use the same word – praxis - to denote both social action and research, and indeed, one of the major questions here is whether feminist research contributes to social change. The principles of action research conjoin with feminist research in emphasizing the dimension of improving the quality of life of those whose experiences feed the research. Such improvement may consist of raising awareness with regard to a social problem, establishing the position of a social problem in the public discourse, or it may have a more concrete nature, such as changing the structure of opportunities open to women. The important point in the conjunction between feminist research and action research is the absence of a division between the researcher and the field investigated. The basic assumption is that every feminist researcher comes to the research site from a position of involvement, and that it is necessary to emphasize this involvement reflectively and relate to it practically.

Feminist critique views studies emerging from a basic assumption of division between the researcher and the research site as research that adopts an apparent neutrality while its results are political. In other words, even when researchers do not declare their involvement in the field, and this indeed is one of the critical characteristics of androcentric studies, which examine male spheres by masculine criteria while ignoring the whole range of women’s experiences, they are political in the sense that they reinforce the decentering and silencing of women. Our discussion here deals with some elements in feminist methodology, such as: What research methods can be considered feminist? Is every single study involving the variable of “sex” feminist? Can all research on women be considered feminist? What type of knowledge is created by research that places women’s experience at its center? In general, the lecture attempts to answer these questions from a perspective that embraces Standpoint Theory and is yet aware of its critique. Standpoint Theory argues that the experience of oppression gives female researchers a dual viewpoint. On the one hand, as members of a society and as people who function in the cultural context being studied, they necessarily share the dominant hegemonic viewpoint and the forms of speech that it permits. At the same time, due to their own experience of oppression, they possess an additional viewpoint that enables them to arrive at deeper understanding of the social power structures as they appear when examined from below - from the standpoint of those they oppress. On this point, Standpoint Theory emphasizes that the researcher herself is a major research tool in the study. Her manifold experiences permit her to find a connection with sensitivity and knowledge that are inaccessible to those who come from a different social position. Does a researcher who experiences many forms of oppression, for example, one who is also a feminist, a Palestinian, a lesbian and physically disabled, become in this context, someone who can enrich the understanding of her field research from a point of view that is rare in its sensitivities? Feminist research thus links academic commitment to research located in an ongoing dialogue between researchers on the field work with interviewees out of the dual aim of understanding their world with all its complexity, its resources and barriers, and political commitment to the accumulation of knowledge focused on exposing mechanisms of oppression and active erosion of their cultural-social-historical power status. The researcher gradually develops as a research tool, her commitments and options for action change and in the process they reshape her questions and the products of her research.