Editorial: Feminist Research Dismantles Power Structures and Builds Equitable Platforms

Abstract

Feminist research seeks to dismantle oppressive hierarchical power structures and to build equitable platforms for dialogue and working together toward caring for each other and the planet. Feminist research concerns issues of power and privilege. Linda Åhäll (2018), honorary Fellow in International Relations at Keele University in the U.K., conveys the core of feminist research in stating: “What makes research feminist is not limited to analyses of ‘women’ or perhaps even gender … Feminist research questions are about power and how the world works through power structures” (p. 12). Feminist research exposes hierarchical structures that maintain constricting gender norms, privilege, and dominating forms of power. Privilege from a feminist perspective is when specific identity markers provide advantages that are not related to accomplishments or anything that a person has done. Feminist intersectional research exposes how systems of power and privilege converge to disadvantage groups marginalized by those with privilege and power. Gender is a lived experience, socially constructed, and political in affordances of privilege and power. Gender is both lived and symbolic relationships of privilege and power in terms of recognition, agency, and access to education, healthcare, and employment free from sexual harassment and discriminatory biases. Feminist art and feminist art pedagogy are creative resistance and cultural production that talks back to patriarchy by dismantling patriarchal hierarchical systems privileging men.