Crossing the Gender Chasm for Productive Field Engagement

Abstract

The paper aims to demonstrate that while researcher’s background could be a factor in gaining access to research participants and to the organization, other elements like trustworthiness, reflexivity, and engaged participant listening help in overcoming gender barriers in interviewing the research participants. This paper is a reflexive account of field experience as a part of doctoral research aimed at establishing that not only could gender barriers to access to research participants be overcome, but also that a gender-outsider positionality offers insights into women’s workplace experiences that are shaped through the discourses and practices of managerialism. The field experience highlighted the possibility of gaining and sustaining access through identifying spaces of engagement where the interests of the researcher, the organization, and the research participants intersect. The field experience pointed to the significance of the researcher’s own past experience with managerialism, in taking a closer look regarding the lived experiences of women employees with managerialism. Lastly, it is demonstrated that institutional ethnographic fieldwork could also contribute to the organization’s endeavors for creating a safe, non-discriminatory, and inclusive workspace for women employees. This paper establishes that gender barriers to access to research participants could be overcome through a standpoint of trusted outsider and use of institutional ethnography.