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- Title
GENDER AND ETHICS IN QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWING: RESEARCH RELATIONSHIPS IN THE CONTEXT OF A STUDY OF INFERTILITY IN PORTUGAL.
- Authors
Machado, Helena; Silva, Susana
- Abstract
This chapter seeks to understand the role of gender relations and gender identities in the context of doing qualitative research and their impacts in the ethics of conducting qualitative interviewing. This discussion is informed by the research experience of two female researchers related with two different studies, with a particular focus on the process of conducting qualitative interviews with women and men in Portugal who had been medically diagnosed with infertility. Our aim is to focus on two main topics related to gender and ethics in the research relationships, in the context of studying infertility. First, the gender of the participant in the study: should we have interviewed women, men or couples? Should the interviewer be a woman or a man? Second, the construction of local ethics: is there a need for local ethical guidelines for researchers who use qualitative research in infertility? We will explore the emotions that we have experienced when doing qualitative research about infertility, illustrating that with empirical examples from our fieldwork. Those feelings were particularly acute due to two main factors: in the presence of social and gender inequalities (e.g., socioeconomic, professional and geographic inequalities in the access to fertility drugs for ovarian stimulation and women's physical and emotional discomfort within the fertility treatments): and by the fact that one of the researchers was confronted by some of the participants in the study with questions about her own fertility and her fulfillment of the role of being a mother. We call for a feminist research methods training program that takes into account the social, cultural, ethical and professional local contexts where the daily research relationship occurs.
- Publication
International Journal of Ethics, 2008, Vol 6, Issue 2/3, p157
- ISSN
1556-4444
- Publication type
Academic Journal