THE APPLICATION OF A FEMINIST RESEARCH PROCESS WHEN RESEARCHING WOMENS LIVE: A CASE STUDY OF RURAL BUSINESSWOMEN IN MALAYSIA

ASSOC. PROF. DR. ROHANA YUSOF NORTHERN CORRIDOR RESEARCH CENTRE (NCRC) LEVEL 2, ECONOMIC BUILDING COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA 06010 UUM SINTOK KEDAH DARUL AMAN MALAYSIA Email: rohana@uum.edu.my 04-928 3651/4661

ABSTRACT Researchers who took a feminist point of view noted that women had historically been excluded from the entrepreneurship literature and argued for the need to understand entrepreneurship as a gendered activity. An overview of the literature on women entrepreneurs from studies in the 1980s and the 1990s has addressed issues of motivation, barriers to entry and gender-related problems and has generally provided on description of female-owned business in a number of countries. Arguably, despite the increasing interest in this area and the advances made in our understanding of female entrepreneurship, these studies contain aspects of both the research techniques used and the current research agenda which have impeded further progress. Hence there is a need to feminize the research on entrepreneurs by including the experiences of women in what we know about entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process. Therefore to address these issues this paper have attempted to review selected literatures and provide some useful framework for establishing an appropriate methodological perspective to study 31 businesswomen from the District of Pendang, Kedah through deploying a feminist research process. The experience gain from application of a feminist perspective in research has help the researcher to understand the epistemological assumptions underlying the feminist perspective in researching womens lives and acknowledging the importance of looking at the detailed process of knowledge productions.

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Paper presented at the 10th Conference of The Asia Pasific Sociological Association (APSA 2010) Kota Kinabalu, Hyatt Hotel, 8-11 December 2010

Paper presented at the 10th Conference of The Asia Pasific Sociological Association (APSA 2010) Kota Kinabalu, Hyatt Hotel, 8-11 December 2010