Introduction: Doing Feminist Narrative Research

Abstract

The aim of this collection is to bring together feminist scholarship and narrative research in order to explore how feminist narrative research can be employed to understand and potentially improve the lives of self-identified women. The collection is therefore about the stories that can be and are told by, for and about women, but it is not simply a celebration of women’s stories. Nor is it a straightforward call to honour the stories women (can) tell. Rather, the contributors to the collection explore some of the opportunities and challenges of doing research that is at the same time both feminist and narrative and highlight the importance of acknowledging the power dynamics involved in constructing all knowledge or stories. In doing so they raise important questions about how and why we do such research and what we need to be aware of if we are to avoid simply reinforcing those dominant stories that have up to now delimited (some) women’s possibilities. The collection provides unique insights into how and why we might use narrative methods to explore women’s lives and offers some imperatives for questioning the kinds of stories that can and are told by, for and about women. In problematising the idea of simply honouring the stories women tell, some of the contributors also demonstrate how stories and narrative frameworks that inform the stories women are able to tell can be constraining as well as potentially liberating. As such, the collection not only discusses some of the opportunities and challenges of doing feminist narrative research but is at the same time also an important, albeit at times challenging, read.