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Case Study Research in Feminism

Feminism is a doctrine, ideology, or movement that addresses and advocates for the equal rights of women. In the context of case study research, feminism is a theory and a research practice; a framework that can be used to examine, analyze, and critique the lives of women.

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Feminist research has as its objective the study of the domination and oppression of women in order to change and/or eliminate the sources of that oppression. It emerged from concerns about the invisibility and exploitation of women across several centuries. While it is often thought that feminist research focuses solely on women's experiences and issues, this is not the case. Recent feminist research conducted within the socialist feminist paradigm, for example, has examined men as a social category. David Collinson, Jeff Hearn, Deborah Kerfoot, David Knights, and Patricia Y. Martin, among others, have used feminist theories to examine the intersection of masculinities, management, and organizations. Feminist theories, then, can be used to study any group or situation in which one or more individuals are considered to be the “other,” that is, dominated or oppressed in some manner, or who are located outside of the mainstream (as it is defined in a particular context).

Feminist research has been conducted in such diverse fields as accounting, anthropology, history, organization studies, and the sociology of workers, to study a large number of diverse phenomena. For example, feminist research has examined women entering and working in traditionally male occupations; gender and race in organizations; gendered subtexts of organizational and institutional structures; the gendering of institutions such as education; and the gendering of leadership. It should be noted, however, that not all research directed toward gender issues is conducted from a feminist perspective or uses feminist theories. Gary Powell's research on women holding management positions, for example, does not explicitly or implicitly seek to achieve social change.

Feminist Perspectives

Rosemarie Putnam Tong discusses the diversity of feminist thinking in her introduction to Feminist Thought. She notes that the use of categories or labels in feminist thought can assist in communicating to a broader public that feminism is not monolithic and that not all feminists think alike. The labels can be used as teaching tools to mark a range of different approaches, perspectives, and frameworks that feminist scholars use to shape explanations of and propose solutions for the elimination of women's oppression. Just as there is diversity in perspectives of feminist thought, there is diversity in the names of the categories used to describe the perspectives. These labels are not intended to be definitive or mutually exclusive.

Pushkala Prasad identifies four feminist scholarly traditions: liberal, women's voice/experience, radical, and poststructural. Tong identifies eight feminist thought categories: liberal, radical, Marxist and socialist, psychoanalytic and gender, existentialist, postmodern, multicultural and global, and eco. Marta Calás and Linda Smircich discuss seven feminist approaches or theories: liberal, radical, psychoanalytic, Marxist, socialist, poststructuralist/postmodern, and third world/(post) colonialism. All of the perspectives are grounded in the recognition of male dominance in social arrangements (e.g., patriarchy and sexual division of labor) and all have a stated desire to change or eliminate this domination. Where the theories differ is in the issues they address, the questions they raise, and the vocabulary they use in the research process. Calás and Smircich note that each feminist approach provides alternative accounts for gender inequality, frames the research problems and questions differently, and proposes different courses of action to resolve identified problems. Case studies in feminism can be conducted using any of the perspectives identified here, although researchers may find some of them work better than others. Three of these perspectives are described in the following paragraphs.

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