Ethics and feminist research: theory and practice

Ethics concerns the morality of human conduct. In relation to social research, it refers to the moral deliberation, choice and accountability on the part of researchers throughout the research process. General concern about ethics in social research has grown apace. In the UK, for example, from the late 1980s on, a number of professional associations developed and/or revised ethical declarations for their members. The guidelines available from these bodies include: the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth’s Ethical Guidelines for Good Research Practice; the British Educational Research Association’s Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research; the British Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics and Conduct; and the Social Research Association’s Ethical Guidelines. Indeed, it would be interesting to trace the genealogy of these statements as they all seem to acknowledge drawing on each other’s declarations. Research funders may also produce ethical statements, such as the Economic and Social Research Council (see www.esrc.ac.uk/_images/Framework_for_ Research_Ethics_tcm8–4586.pdf), which is the UK’s largest organization for funding social research. Academic institutions have set up ethics committees to which academics and students should submit their projects for approval, and research ethics committees have been a feature for social (not just medical) researchers working with and through statutory health organizations for some time now (see www.corec.org.uk). In addition, ethical guidelines have been published that address particular social groups on whom researchers may focus, such as children (see Priscilla Alderson and Virginia Morrow, 2004). Researchers themselves have written extensively on ethics in social research. While feminist researchers certainly have not been the only authors to undertake reflexive accounts of the politics of empirical research practice, it is fair to say that such reflections have done and do form a substantial feature of feminist publications on the research process. Indeed, some have characterized feminist ethics as a ‘booming industry’ (Jaggar, 1991). These pieces, however, are not usually explicit investigations of ethics per se. In discursive terms, they are posed in terms of politics rather than ethics. Nonetheless,