Resources

Close relationships between researchers and participants engaged in a feminst participatory action research project have brought joy and insight, but also challenges. Through the project the authors collaborate to enhance participants' careers and, among some, develop feminst consciousness. This paper discusses methodological and ethical issues that derive from the closeness of the relationships between many of the participants and the authors themelves. Subjectivities are explored, the issues associated with interpreting participants' stories, actions and conversations, the risk of perpetuating uncritical assimilation or colonisation for Maori participants, and the challenge of matching practice with ideals of emancipation for all women.

Women's empowerment is a central aim of feminist action research. However, due to the many contradictory discourses of empowerment, it has become a contested concept. Drawing on poststructuralist theories of power-knowledge, discourse and subjectivity, this article critically analyses the discourses identified in an Australian feminist action research porjcect involving rural women, academics and industry partners. This project aimed to empower women to discuss and use interactive communication technologies (ICTs). This analysis highlights the contradictory effects of the egalitarian and expert discourses that were identified, and the multiple, often conflicting, subject positions that were taken up by the researchers and participants. Our analysis suggests that discourses of empowerment and disempowerment intersect and interpenetrate one another, and highlights some of the dangers and contradictions associated with feminist participatory action research. We argue that a poststructuralist appproach to analysis and critical reflexivity can lessen the "impossible burden" on academic feminists engaged in emancipatory research.