CHAPTER 4: DESIGNING THE CASE STUDY: REACHING THE VOICES OF
4.3 Section 1: Qualitative case study design
4.3.2 Feminist paradigm
A research paradigm focuses on the theoretical components of social sciences (Wahyuni, 2012, p. 67). Willis, Jost and Nilakanta (2007, p. 8) describe a paradigm as a thorough system that directs the investigation. From a theoretical understanding, a paradigm consists of an opinion on the nature of reality (ontology) – “whether it is internal or external to the knower”; an opinion of the type of knowledge that can be produced and standards for justifying it (epistemology); and a well-organised method to produce that knowledge (methodology) (Taylor & Medina, 2011, p. 2).
Epistemology is closely related to ontology and methodology; as ontology entails the philosophy of reality, epistemology focuses on how we come to know that reality, while methodology recognises the practices used to attain knowledge of it (Krauss, 2005, pp. 758-759). Amongst the different types of research paradigms, namely positivist, interpretivist, structuralist, feminist and poststructuralist, I position myself in the feminist paradigm because, according to Ardovini-Brooker (2002, p. 9), the objective of feminist research is to discover and eradicate the blinders that conceal knowledge and interpretations with regard to women’s experiences and behaviours that have conventionally been suppressed. The feminist paradigm enabled me to draw upon the insights of women, by placing them in the middle of the research inquiry and by raising the concerns around power.
In feminist epistemology, the diversity of women’s voices is fundamental (Durna, 1991, p. xiii). According to Flick (2018, pp. 67-68), feminist research usually makes use of qualitative research to reach out to women’s voices, instead of quantitative research, which often cannot capture the voices of women. A feminist perspective permits the voices of women to be heard and a qualitative research approach makes sure that the most important voices of the participants explore the value and quality of data.
Feminist research encompasses gender equality in economic, social and political arenas (Imam, Rahim & Raza, 2018, p. 2). Feminist perspectives carry messages of empowerment that verify knowledge claims by those who have privileged positions.
Feminist theory and tradition involve taking steps to eliminate privileges given to a specific group (Hesse-Biber, 2011, p. 3). Gender regimes operating in a higher education institution can be studied through the feminist lens that enables the study of the complexity of a gendered context, which no other paradigm can do.
Feminist perspectives are viewed as problematising the different conditions of women and the settings that create such conditions (Cresswell, 2014, p. 98). In many contexts, gender regimes conceal the oppression that women usually experience. For instance, educational and institutional contexts work towards covering up such inequalities through a politically correct discourse. Thus, in researching such contexts, individuals are interviewed to know how they have personally experienced discrimination (Cresswell, 2014, p. 48). For this study, a concern associated with discrimination of individuals was examined. This calls for a methodology that allows for the exposure of complexity of structures and for interactions to emerge. It is understood that through narrative interviews, personal experiences are told and constructed in ways that allow emotions to unveil (Hutchinson, Wilson & Wilson, 1994, p. 162).
Feminist research has enabled to explore how gender regimes operate through personal, institutional, cultural, curricular and emotional experiences, which all form part of the learning experiences of the female engineering students. The meaning that the female engineering students ascribed to their learning experiences was explored with reference to those meanings influencing their learning experiences.
4.3.2.1 Epistemological stance
Epistemology presents the following questions: “What is the relationship between the knower and what is known? How do we know what we know? What counts as knowledge?” (Krauss, 2005, pp. 758-759). An epistemology is a concept about what knowledge is, how is knowledge acquired and who can acquire knowledge (Raven, 2014, p. 244). According to Alcoff and Potter (1993, p. 1), feminist theorists refer to feminist epistemology as the ways of knowing of women, the experiences of women
or knowledge of women. Ardovini-Brooker (2002, p. 1) summarised the term
“feminist epistemology” as combining the knowledge of women with their experiences. According to Ardovini-Brooker (2002, p. 2), feminist researchers do not have to look “for the one truth but for the multiple truths” that exist in the discrimination of women. Feminist epistemology is used to significantly assess the structure of male knowledge (Dillard, 2000). According to Harding (1987), in feminist epistemology, the issue of gender is a key aspect, especially in terms of identifying the knower and the experiential aspects of knowing. Feminist epistemology is a philosophy that allows researchers to analyse and understand the experiences of oppressed women and to apply this knowledge for social change (Nagy Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, p. 56). Thus, feminist epistemology identifies how dominant conceptions and practices disadvantage women and the struggles they undertake to reform them to serve their interests.
From a feminist perspective, feminist epistemology is well matched with intersectionality, as knowledge, knower and knowing are associated with power and discrimination (Else-Quest & Hyde, 2016, p. 160). The social structure of institutional settings has an influence on how individuals experience the world (Hartsock, 1987, p. 188). According to Raven (2014, p. 247), feminist epistemologists can change the view that knowledge is male. Therefore, studying the inclusion of women in the STEM fields aims to address the absence of women in STEM fields, thereby also changing knowledge construction around engineering, which, in the context of Mauritius, has often been construed in masculine terms.
This could not be achieved with epistemological assumptions characteristic of those drawn upon when observing teaching and learning in classroom. Instead, more engaged critical individual conversations were required. Knowledge of what participants said depended on the knowledge of the background of beliefs, values and practices of the context (higher education institution) that altogether created a gender regime within the context. My interpretation of the participants’ discourse assumed that forms of oppression might covertly or overtly operate in ways that consciously or unconsciously affect the way they experienced learning, being and becoming. This epistemological position linked up effectively with the feminist research paradigm within which this study situates itself.
Furthermore, interaction with the participants allowed me to make meaning of their experiences. It took the epistemological stance that the procedure of meaning making of the learning experiences of the participants from their critical individual conversations is the fundamentals for generating new knowledge. Critical individual conversations were reflective in nature, which drew on the notion of power and dominance and reciprocity between the researcher and the participants. During the critical individual conversations, both the researcher and the participants were able to make meaning of whatever was said by the participants. The participants were actively involved in meaning making with the researcher and the researcher had the power of making meaning by probing.
4.3.2.2 Ontological stance
According to Dall’Alba (2009, p. 35), ontology is “being in-the-world”, which emphasises that people are rooted in and entangled with their world. In this way, ontology, or what it means to be an individual in a specific role, is a precursor and is an essential part of identity advancement, or of how a person positions himself/herself and is positioned by others in that role (Verdín, Godwin & Ross, 2018, p. 34). Blaikie (2000, p. 8) describes “ontology as claims and assumptions that are made about the nature of social reality, claims about what exists, what it looks like, what units make it up and how these units interact with each other”.
Based on the ontological stance that there is not only one reality, but as multiple realities also exist, the study situates itself within a feminist paradigm (Feldman, 2018, p. 2; Nold, 2018, p. 60). As the choice of any paradigm is bound to rest on its fitness for purpose, the feminist paradigm here is deemed to be an effective means of exploring gender regimes and learning experiences, as it includes the presence or absence of discourse of written or oral words, practices and actions, experiences and relations of power that finally altogether lead to multiple truths. The feminist paradigm informs that individuals make meanings and interpretations from their experiences. From this paradigmatic awareness, to gain knowledge of the experiences of the participants, the choice of methodology became critical, as I wanted a methodology that would enable me to study the lived experiences of the female students pursuing engineering in the selected institution. I wanted a
methodology that would enable me to study power structures and systems, by allowing the women to narrate their stories; something critical for feminist research.