Conducting feminist research in nursing: personal and political challenges
Female; Humans; Attitude of Health Personnel; Choice Behavior; Feminism; Women/psychology; Nurses/psychology; Nursing Methodology Research/methods/standards; Politics; Research Personnel/psychology
The challenges of doing feminist nursing research include both personal and political elements. Some of these arise from the threefold influences of being nurses, women, and academics within a larger social context that may be antithetical to feminist values. This paper explores such challenges, using examples from the research of each of the three authors. It includes discussion of such concepts as the tendency to reify certain methodologies and the political forces that may drive research decisions. The authors summarize the challenges of doing feminist nursing research as learning to integrate diverse approaches rather than adhering to a politically correct way of conducting research. They draw on their own research experiences to illustrate the internal conflicts and personal struggles inherent in overcoming the perception that there is one proper way to conduct feminist inquiry.
1998
Maxwell-Young L; Olshansky E; Steele R
Health Care For Women International
1998
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
Journal Article
<a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/073993398246070" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">10.1080/073993398246070</a>
I am not the kind of woman who complains of everything': illness stories on self and shame in women with chronic pain
Female; Humans; Adult; Attitude to Health; Middle Aged; Chronic disease; Feminism; Narration; Pain/psychology
In this study, we explore issues of self and shame in illness accounts from women with chronic pain. We focused on how these issues within their stories were shaped according to cultural discourses of gender and disease. A qualitative study was conducted with in-depth interviews including a purposeful sampling of 10 women of varying ages and backgrounds with chronic muscular pain. The women described themselves in various ways as 'strong', and expressed their disgust regarding talk of illness of other women with similar pain. The material was interpreted within a feminist frame of reference, inspired by narrative theory and discourse analysis. We read the women's descriptions of their own (positive) strength and the (negative) illness talk of others as a moral plot and argumentation, appealing to a public audience of health personnel, the general public, and the interviewer: As a plot, their stories attempt to cope with psychological and alternative explanations of the causes of their pain. As performance, their stories attempt to cope with the scepticism and distrust they report having been met with. Finally, as arguments, their stories attempt to convince us about the credibility of their pain as real and somatic rather than imagined or psychological. In several ways, the women negotiated a picture of themselves that fits with normative, biomedical expectations of what illness is and how it should be performed or lived out in 'storied form' according to a gendered work of credibility as woman and as ill. Thus, their descriptions appear not merely in terms of individual behaviour, but also as organized by medical discourses of gender and diseases. Behind their stories, we hear whispered accounts relating to the medical narrative about hysteria; rejections of the stereotype medical discourse of the crazy, lazy, illness-fixed or weak woman.
2004
Werner A; Isaksen LW; Malterud K
Social Science & Medicine
2004
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
Journal Article
<a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.12.001" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.12.001</a>