Methodological Awareness in Feminist Research: Reclaiming Experiences of Hostility in Workplace Studies

Abstract

This article extends contemporary debates on gender, sexuality, and power by exploring how power relations play out through the researcher–researched relationship in male-dominated workplaces. Drawing on short-term ethnography, this article discusses the utility of analyzing the researcher’s embodied field in feminist research and advances our knowledge of body politics through the exploration of workplace performances. Specifically, it draws upon the author’s research encounters with 33 men working in an Australian metropolitan fire service. The analysis demonstrates the strengths of using reflexive bodily accounts as forms of data and makes suggestions toward greater methodological awareness around the intersection of masculine authority, heterosexuality, and embodied feminist research.