RESPONSE TO MARTYN HAMMERSLEY'S PAPER `ON FEMINIST METHODOLOGY'.

The article presents the author's response to Martyn Hammersley's paper "On Feminist Mythology." Hammersley questions whether or not it is justifiable to privilege the significance of gender. What strikes me here is the assumption that gender is indeed privileged by feminists in a uniform way. The case for criticism is considerably weakened when Hammersley himself cites leading feminist writers who have not only questioned the privileging of gender over other factors such as race and class, but who presumably do not privilege gender in their work. Hammersley's references to methodological injunctions to explore women's experiences suggest a reading of feminist work which is limited to redressing the balance in theory, policy and research by focusing exclusively on women. The later part of his paper which focuses on the validity of experience as opposed to method is really making two claims: firstly, that in using experience as part of the approach to research then anything goes--critical awareness, rigour and so on are abandoned; secondly, that the recognition and inclusion of experience in knowledge or knowledge production does not automatically increase the validity of that knowledge. I have more sympathy with the second claim than with the first. Firstly, however, I do not believe that experience and method are polarized in quite the way, which Hammersley suggests. My view is that recent feminist debates have been about the role of experience in method rather than verses method.