ABSTRACT
Feminist bioethics is committed to grounding ethical argumentation in good evidence about the everyday world and people’s experiences within it. It thus requires some meaningful connection to the empirical. This chapter focuses explicitly on what it means to do feminist empirical bioethics, outlining the perspectives, practices and communities of practice entailed. The perspectives underpinning feminist empirical bioethics can be contrasted ontologically and epistemologically with those of traditional analytic philosophical bioethics. These perspectives shape practices toward particular kinds of questions, and foster a thoughtful approach to the relationship between the normative and the descriptive, a commitment to methodological standards across disciplines, and sustained, grounded and inclusive attention to the empirical. Future challenges for the community of feminist empirical bioethicists include expanding the methods and methodologies used, attending more closely to intersectional and global disadvantage, and connecting research to action to increase justice and support social change.
