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African Women and ICTS
Investigating Technology, Gender and Empowerment
By Ineke Buskens, Anne Webb Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2009 Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84813-606-9
CHAPTER 1
Doing research with women for the purpose of transformation
INEKE BUSKENS
Qualitative research with women of the nature that the authors in this book have conducted poses certain challenges. Both researchers and research respondents have grown up in androcratic societies. This means that both parties will look at themselves and each other through the filters formed by and within the prevalent sexist thinking. While there will undoubtedly be great variance between the filters within and between individuals, groups, communities and countries, which will remain unknown to varying degrees, the fact that everybody still does have a sexist filter of some sort is inescapable.
Women as research respondents
Women have internalized unexamined assumptions and biased conceptions about their being, capacities or the lack of them to such a degree that they often do not really know who they are and what they want. Women may believe that as persons they are less worthy, capable, competent and talented, etc., than they really are. Furthermore, the culturally accepted concepts in male-dominated societies do not always allow women to express their realities and experiences. The dominant androcratic ideology is also often judgemental and denigrating of women (Daly 1973; Belenky et al. 1986; Gilligan 1982).
In asking women to talk about their lives, qualitative researchers also implicitly ask them to choose the concepts with which to do that. As these concepts will be influenced by images serving an androcratic culture, they might be normative, denigrating or simply unsuitable to reflect women's realities. When the concepts women have internalized about themselves sabotage their human journey, they will experience tension and conflict between what they inherently know about themselves and what they believe they are capable of. They may not even know that the sociocultural concepts they hold about women in general speak to their personally constructed female self-image all the time. Asking women about their feelings is accessing the area of personal truth and experience while simultaneously opening up their relationship with this dominant culture. It is exactly in the mental space between culturally acceptable concepts and personal truth that women keep the tension between how they think they are/should be and how they really feel (Anderson and Jack 2006).
What can researchers expect in their conversations with women?
Women may be very sensitive to what they expect researchers want to hear, because they feel insecure when they have to express who they think they are and what they are feeling. Women often do not have concepts that 'feel really right' for them and which represent their experiences fully. Women may thus contradict themselves and speak between the lines. Women may measure themselves against the stereotype they hold of 'the good woman' and sometimes they do that in conjunction with sharing where 'they themselves are really at'. They may speak in 'stereo' at times, voicing the culturally accepted part of their female role as well as the muted sounds of their authentic personal experience (ibid.).
Women may share experiences while critiquing what they are saying simultaneously through meta-statements. The concepts women are using may be 'concepts in construction', and women may try out different concepts the next time. Sometimes they may use culturally accepted concepts to critique their own life; sometimes they will use their own personal experience to critique culturally accepted concepts. Many women have a lot of unfulfilled dreams as well as anxieties and doubts concerning the fulfilment of these dreams. In-depth research may bring all this up and cause distress. Counselling capacity is therefore an appropriate asset for researchers (ibid.).
Research with women: the Zimbabwe exemplar
In the following, the research project undertaken by the GRACE team from Zimbabwe is discussed to highlight the type of research decisions that typically characterize qualitative research with women and the opportunities for valid and useful knowledge construction such research offers. This research is fully presented in Chapter 6.
At the University of Zimbabwe, three researchers, university librarians at the time of the research, had noticed that male students were outnumbering the female students in the library computer lab by far. The library computers are accessible to all students from all faculties. The statistics they had gathered on the basis of the logbooks and the student enrolment ratios confirmed their observations. At the time of this research, the library had not acquired enough computers to accommodate all students who needed access. The rule of 'first come, first served' was therefore applied.
On the basis of their statistics and participant observation, the researchers designed an in-depth qualitative study to understand this situation. In their analysis of these female students' stories about their access to ICT labs on campus, the researchers found that there were various reasons that explained the female students' limited access. Only one reason will be discussed here – namely that the competition for access often resulted in physical shoving; in other words, the male students would push the female students away.
The researchers could have stopped at this point and would, with the data they had gathered, have been able to compose an insightful story about the relationship between women students, the use of ICTs and institutions for higher learning in Africa.
The researchers then turned their focus, however, to the two main 'anomalies' their research had yielded: the few female students who did access the computer labs, whom they started calling 'deviants' because they deviated from the norm, and the fact that quite a few of the 'normal' female students, when asked about how they felt about not being able to access the computer lab as they would have liked to, did not question the 'first come, first served' rule at all. In these respondents' minds, this was a perfectly acceptable rule and an improvement on what they were used to previously. At the same time, these very same students lamented the fact that they would have to turn to Internet cafés and colleges in order to gain computer access.
Turning to the 'deviants', the female students who did access the library computers, the researchers found that these students not only were younger, but also had more ICT experience. Furthermore, these students were very aware of the other female students staying away and the reasons why they did so. They were aware of the discrepancy between the apparent fairness of the rule and the unfairness that resulted from it.
Regarding the 'normal' women students, it would have been understandable at this point for the researchers to have become impatient and judgemental and assess these 'normal' respondents as contradicting themselves, being confused and not able to take an opportunity when it was provided. Fortunately they did not. The researchers understood the fact that their respondents had formed their opinions, their thinking, in a social setting where the 'first come, first served' rule is considered democratic and fair – in other words socially accepted. The researchers were aware of the fact that such a concept would be the dominant and maybe the only concept their respondents would have to give meaning to their experience of no access. They were sensitive to the fact that women often do not have the right concepts at their disposal to say what they really feel. They understood that this phenomenon does not reveal any individual intellectual or emotional shortcomings on the part of women, but speaks to the reality of having been born and grown up as women in androcratic societies. As researchers they also understood that this phenomenon of apparent contradiction, when analysed properly, would yield insight into deeper layers of meaning and experience.
The researchers could have concluded that the qualities the 'deviant' students had were the qualities necessary for all other female students to have in order to succeed in getting access to the lab computers. Fortunately they did not. Their analysis went a level deeper and includes the two respondent groups' processes of creating meaning for the experience of non-access and the rule of equal access. And in linking their understanding about the two groups, a new concept emerged: the confidence in self, able to challenge gender discrimination in an ICT context, may be grounded in ICT experience.
On the basis of this case study, it becomes clear that research with women can be done successfully by researchers who are willing to go beyond what seems obvious and are prepared to keep unveiling layers of meaning and experience until the moment a level of deeper insight is reached which can make sense of all the data on the basis of one coherent explanatory model. Undoubtedly, the researchers' drive to get practical knowledge that would be usable and able to generate sustainable change would have inspired and motivated them to keep the analysis process open and not close it prematurely.
Relating with women respondents
Research with women asks of researchers to listen well, to contextualize, to be able to fully accept and contest what they hear, and to be as methodologically innovative as needed and as possible. Research that aims to be receptive to and engage women's agency for the purpose of transformation requires of the researchers even more: it requires that researchers encourage women respondents to think beyond their current realities, and to consider what needs to be in place for them to pursue their visions.
Listening to women, really listening to women, means listening to what is said and how it is said, but also listening to what is not said and what cannot be said. It will be very important to listen carefully to what is said 'between the lines' and observe nonverbal communication. Researchers may have to hold a 'space of not-yet-understanding' for quite a while because it is important not to make sense 'too soon'.
Because the moments of contradiction and paradox point towards the places where the tension between women's acceptance of their sociocultural values and their authentic experiences and dreams for themselves are held, researchers need to be able to recognize these and use them. Using such moments often involves challenge and confrontation, acting from deep knowledge of the contexts in which women are situated and without judgement of women's choices, thoughts and emotions. When focusing on the thoughts, emotions and choices women respondents express, the concept of 'adaptive preferences' has to be brought into the equation: women have internalized the myths of gender inequality that are prevalent in their society and have formed an attachment to identities informed by such myths and the practices that are coherent with them (Nussbaum 2000). Women may have accepted the 'unacceptable as natural' and may share 'their truth' from this perspective. If such truth were not to be examined, women could be made into 'informed' agents of their own disempowerment even in processes that were meant to be empowering and transformative. At the same time, however, it is important to be sensitive to women's boundaries and respect the unfolding of their emotions, thoughts and choices.
In order to understand women's dreams and desires beyond their female-accepted role, it is often necessary to create a mental space for them where they can experience that part of themselves and give it a voice. Research designs and methods will have to take into account that women's potential for sovereignty and change, as well as their socialization into limitation, exist in women simultaneously. Techniques that stimulate women's creativity and free expression could be combined with in-depth interviews and participant observation.
Relating to oneself when doing research with women
Researchers should listen to themselves while they are listening to women. Not only because their personal discomfort can alert them to discrepancies between what women say and what they actually feel (Anderson and Jack 2006), but also because it is important for researchers to get to know their own mind filters, to make themselves aware of any unconscious prejudice they may hold (Buskens 2006, 2002; Smaling 1990, 1995, 1998). Given the research focus of gender influence in the context of women's empowerment in the research encounter, both female and male researchers will be confronted with their own gendered self and the sexist filters they have. The more they are prepared to look into the mirror and own what they see, the richer their relationship with their respondents will be, the richer their research process and the richer their data. The confrontation with their own gendered self and the experience of the gender dynamics in the research relationship may mean something different for men to what it means for women. Where men could be unaware of many of the unobvious interpersonal communication dynamics, women could lose awareness because they could revert to unexamined judgement.
A long-time taboo subject, female sexism has now been openly discussed (Chesler 2001). Fear of identification and connection with other women seems to be the shadow force behind female sexism. Women's sexist attitudes towards other women are linked to a country's general sexism rate: the higher the general sexism rate is, the more prevalent female sexism will be. In their study of nineteen countries in five continents, Glick and Fiske found that of the four countries with the highest sexism score, three were in Africa: Botswana, Nigeria and South Africa (Glick and Fiske 1996, 1997; Glick et al. 2000; quoted in Chesler 2001). Women's aggression towards other women expresses itself predominantly indirectly – in the form of shunning, shaming, judging and even stigmatizing (Chesler 2001). Even being feminist does not seem to guarantee a lack of hostility towards other women.
To maintain a reflexive attitude is important in all qualitative research; in gender research with women it is absolutely crucial. In questioning research decisions, and the emotions and thoughts the research encounters bring up, researchers have the opportunity to get to know more about themselves. When researchers ask the questions 'What shall I do now?' and 'Why am I doing this?', they also ask themselves the questions 'What is the self I am bringing to this research moment now? What is the self that expresses itself in relation to the research focus and the research participant now?' This reflexive questioning brings researchers into direct relationship with the sexist filters they have, and possibly other prejudices. This can be very hard and painful. In order to support themselves in maintaining this reflexive attitude, researchers have to be gentle with themselves. It is important to keep striving to become the best one can be, make sure that the resources to do so (emotional, mental, social and financial) are in place and come to an understanding and acceptance of relapses. This attitude could be called self-love, and the discipline in which this attitude expresses itself could be called self-care. In that sense, self-care can thus be constructed as a methodological prerequisite (Buskens 2002), because without it reflexivity is not a sustainable attitude.
According to Chesler, female sexism can be overcome through a disciplined practice of sisterhood. This discipline has to be grounded in self-love (Chesler 2001). Women may find it particularly challenging to love themselves. One of the most devastating effects of oppression is the alienation of self, where people lose loyalty to themselves, to their profoundest feelings and to their love of self (Fanon 1967, quoted in Mageo 2002).
The challenges male researchers face in gender research with women, however, where they encounter their gendered selves and sexist filters, may be, although of a different nature, just as profound. This makes their commitment to a discipline of self-reflexivity and hence self-love just as imperative.
Research for change
In research for change, such as GRACE, the researchers' focus often speaks directly to their own work and life. In GRACE, the research question was: 'How do women in Africa use ICTs for empowerment?' None of the GRACE researchers would be able to do the work they do, empowering themselves, if it were not for their use of ICTs. In turning to their own communities for their research, sharing language, ethnicity, religion and sometimes even the village of birth or working in the same organization, the GRACE researchers operated as 'native anthropologists' (Rodriguez 2001). This has enabled them to establish close relationships with their respondents; it has also challenged their reflexivity, courage, perseverance and love for self. Furthermore, most of the researchers are women researching other women. The more directly the mirror is in front of one's face, the potentially richer one's insights into self and the other become, the more confrontational the research experience will be and the more important self-care becomes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from African Women and ICTS by Ineke Buskens, Anne Webb. Copyright © 2009 Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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