Researching gender at work: possibilities and constraints

In this paper, we are drawing on our experience of researching gender and language in different workplace contexts in the UK and continental Europe, in collaboration with different research participants (senior managers, healthcare professionals, engineers, politicians), in order to explore the following questions:
 
•     What are the implications of the notorious difficulty of getting access to the top levels of these professions for gender and language researchers?
•     In what ways can and should research designs be adapted to accommodate the exigencies of specific research settings?
•     How can feminist researchers offer an attractive proposition to leaders in professional contexts and yet be true to their critical principles?
•     How can feminist researchers convey their principles when attempting to conduct collaborative projects where the researcher and the researched are working together to produce jointly-negotiated research questions and outputs?
•     And in what ways can feminist research principles transform the research process, intentionally or inadvertently?
We argue that we need to be self-reflexive about locating ourselves as researchers within the research topic and process in general, and about maintaining our political/ feminist principles in the process in particular. We look at examples of the multiple positions that we often take during the research process and how our role is reframed within the institutional practices we study. We also suggest strategies for overcoming some of the obstacles associated with conducting research at the top levels of organisations and institutions, while engaging with and reassessing our own value positions.