Feminist Ethics Amid Covid-19: Unpacking Assumptions and Reflections on Risk in Research

Abstract

In the context of my research on aging and later life, I explore the complexities of navigating feminist ethics in the context of a pandemic. This chapter begins by situating how I entered the research process and my early thinking about research ethics, discussing how my assumptions were partially validated in my early data collection. I then unpack how the Covid-19 pandemic has flipped some of these assumptions on their head, underscoring the unexamined ageism that fed them. I reflect on how my understanding of risk in research has also been problematized because of Covid-19. I close with a reflection on feminist research ethics as a practice of feminist methodologies, and gesture towards what I have learned about in practice when unpacking assumptions.