ABSTRACT
Social scientists do research in hopes of discovering how society works. Years are spent in graduate training, learning how to gather, record and analyse data. Courses are not segregated by sex, and we are told that research is research, regardless of one’s gender. Our experiences have led us to believe differently. Being single females doing fieldwork, we discovered there were research problems related to that status. The methodological literature1 and the women studies literature2 do not mention the effects of sex on research relationships, or how these can be dealt with in fieldwork. A few sociologists comment on female observers (Douglas, 1976; Riesman, 1964; Stein, 1954; Wax, 1960), and others consider more general problems, such as the participant observer as a human being (Gans, 1968), or friendships and personal feelings (Johnson, 1975). Also, some anthropologists have described their status as women in other cultures (Bowen, 1964; Golde, 1970; Powdermaker, 1966b) that are suggestive of some of the issues of this chapter.
