The Social Relations Approach, empowerment and women factory workers in Malaysia

This article discusses the empowerment of women factory workers in Malaysia through the lens of Kabeer’s Social Relations Approach. The approach offers an institutional analysis of how gender inequality is produced and calls for the overall terms of exchange and cooperation to be shifted in women’s favour. Its application shows that Malaysian women factory workers face significant challenges, due to the character of institutions, and women’s difficulties in adopting and internalising the notion of ‘empowerment’

On feminist methodology

There is now a considerable literature advocating a feminist methodology. This article summarises the features of such a methodology under four headings: the ubiquitous social significance of gender, the validity of experience as against method, the rejection of hierarchy in the research relationship, and the adoption of the emancipation of women as the goal of research and the criterion of validity. The arguments supporting each of these themes are assessed. The conclusion reached is that while some of these arguments are convincing the overall case for a feminist methodology is not

Commonality, Difference and the Dynamics of Disclosure in In-Depth Interviewing

The last few decades have witnessed a notable growth in literature addressing the politics and ethics of social research. Much of this literature has stressed difference between the researcher and the interviewee, and has addressed the importance of sensitising researchers to the difficulties and dilemmas encountered in in-depth interviewing crossing sex, class, and race boundaries. We argue that an examination of the cultural identities of the researcher and the interviewee, and how they may impact upon the interview process, needs further exploration. As two independent researchers of Chinese young people in Britain, we found that our interview experiences as mixed-descent Chinese-English and Korean-American researchers `positioned' us in terms of both commonality and difference vis-à-vis our interviewees. More attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher shapes interviewees' accounts. Interviewees could claim either commonality or difference with us, on the basis of gender, language, physical appearance and personal relationships