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This is a clear and accessible exploration of feminist method, methodology and epistemology. After situating herself and her work, Gayle Letherby charts the debates concerned with the epistemological, political and practical issues involved in doing feminist research, and places the debates within a wider consideration of the status of knowledge. The main focus of the book is then the particular and practical issues for feminist researchers. It examines how the process of research affects the results of that research and explores the relation between politics and practice in terms of research

In 1998 Ann Oakley published an article in Sociology entitled 'Gender, Methodology and People's Ways of Knowing: Some Problems with Feminism and the Paradigm Debate in Social Science'. Within this piece she suggests that the main methodological concern of feminist sociologists is whether qualitative or quantitative methods are the best way to find out about people's lives. My reading of the feminist literature leads me to disagree and to suggest that the relationship between the process and product, between doing and knowing, i.e. how what we do affects what we get, while using both qualitative and quantitative methods, is the main concern of contemporary feminists. In this piece I present my own review of the feminist literature in order to demonstrate the centrality of the process and product/doing and knowing debate. I draw on a range of work, including other work of Oakley, and I also refer to my own experiences of research and show how issues of process and product/doing and knowing are relevant for me.

In this article I consider issues of knowledge, reflexivity and representation in feminist research. Using my feminist sociological doctoral research as an example I add to debate by feminist researchers and others concerned with epistemological authority. After setting the research scene and outlining what I feel I did and did not achieve both substantively and epistemologically I consider some of the contradictions and tensions in feminist research through a consideration of reflexivity and representation. Throughout I consider issues of auto/biography.

Drawing on my own personal and research experience and on the research of others I consider issues of definition, identity, support, and kinship in relation to lifecourse issues and the experience of 'voluntarily' and 'involuntarily' childless women. Motherhood is still considered to be a primary role for women and women who do not mother children (either biologically or socially) are often stereotyped as desperate or selfish. However, just as the experience of motherhood is complex and varied, so is the experience of nonmotherhood. Whereas some 'voluntarily' childless women define themselves as childfree and some 'involuntarily' childless women feel desperate some of the time, others are more ambivalent. In this article I draw on empirical work that considers the significance of ages and changes to the experience of nonmotherhood and that considers the particular and potential experience of older childless women. As well as demonstrating concerns and challenges, this work also suggests the need to challenge the caricature of the childless woman (and particularly the older childless woman) as bereft. In relation to this I extend my argument to consider both the myth that women who do not mother children of their 'own' always live a childfree life and critically evaluate the view that parenthood automatically leads to kinship support in old age.