Considering More Feminist Participatory Research

: What Congruency Got to Do With It? Maguire, P. (1996). Qualitative Inquiry, 2(1), 106-118.

Mcguire begins her inquiry about the contribution of feminism to the development of PR with the questions, who benefits from the research? and whose interests are served?

Mcguire argues that, because gender oppression takes place in the web of all kinds of oppression, feminism(s) and PR hold in common transformative and liberatory intentions, yet PR often neglected ‘gender’ oppression through androcentric filter.

“Participatory research highlights the centrality of power in the social construction of knowledge. But it is feminist research that calls attention to the centrality of male power in that social construction of knowledge. This power and its manifestations are too often ignored in PR projects and debates. Likewise, there is still little attention paid to the manifestation of male privilege in the everyday relationships and workings of PR and its advocates. Participatory research, while championing Freire’s observations about man’s alienation in the world, is still struggling with grasping women’s alienation from that man-made world in research and beyond.”(p.111)

Mcguire denotes that, whereas PAR contributes to valuing personal experience as part of research process, it is feminism that recognize personal is political, thus leading us to narrow the gaps between personal politics and public practices and examine/challenge our institutions, organizations and our practices and relationships within them.

Mcguire defines PR as a combination of research, education and action. Referring the fact that both feminism and PR are concerned about empowerment, she points out the ontological convergence between the two (Stanley & Wise, 1990).

Thus, she calls for more feminist participatory research by incorporating certain feminist research aspects such as considering redistribution of power, emphasizing shared life or people’s organizational entity, including large-scale studies often utilized in feminist studies, and sharing flaws and shortcomings of PR.