This thesis explores the use of feminist participatory action research (FPAR) within women-only youth and community work settings. The project investigated possibilities for flexible sports participation with non-sporty young women. Underpinned by poststructural feminism, the research considers the complex ways that gendered subjectivities are contested and constructed in relation to sporting embodiment and broader power relations. FPAR's, explicit aim is to affect positive social change. It is: participatory; defined by the need for action; and creates knowledge but not for the sake of knowledge alone. FPAR combines the sharing of common experiences of oppression with collective action. By using FPAR within youth and community settings over the course of 12 months, a group of young mums and a group of young women were encouraged to examine their relationship with physical activity and develop physical activity projects that suited their own needs. Research proceeded through three broad phases: interactive group discussion activities; planning of and participating in needs-led physical activity projects; and project evaluations. This project sought to find new ways of understanding young women’s engagement in physical activity and open up safe spaces for them to consider and experiment with new subjectivities and physically active subject positions. The thesis illuminates the highlights and challenges of implementing physical activity through participatory action research in youth work settings. Findings from the study outline the ways in which young women’s ‘non-sporty’ subjectivities are constructed in relation to discursive practices of gender. Young women’s critical reflections of previous experiences of physical activity revealed the workings of conflicting perceptions of valued emotional capital. The participatory projects provided opportunities for cross-field experiences, which shifted the social field of physical activity, and readdressed relations of power.

Background: Obesity disproportionately affects Pakistani women and rates of obesity related conditions are high in Bradford. Research priority setting can guide the development of policy and practice, resulting in more relevant research. There are no research prioritisation exercises targeted at obesity in Pakistani women. Aim: To develop an obesity research agenda with Pakistani women living in deprived inner-city areas of Bradford. Methods: Using a feminist participatory action research design, a five stage process was adopted involving the following: (i) A systematic review to identify the gaps in knowledge (ii) face-to-face interviews with 21 Pakistani women to generate their health concerns (iii) focus groups to explore the obesity concerns of 23 Pakistani women (iv) survey to identify unmet obesity needs of Pakistani women according to 160 local, multisectoral stakeholders (v) adapted consensus method involving 32 Pakistani women to rank their identified concerns and unmet needs in order of importance. Results: The study identified needs related to cultural and language constraints, including barriers in obtaining health promotion information and the social isolation of women. Education needs and misconceptions surrounding diet and physical activity were also identified. Highest rankings were given to concerns and needs surrounding the mental health of Pakistani women, education needs for a healthy diet, and the benefits of physical activity. Conclusion: Pakistani women’s unmet obesity needs highlight the existence of wider determinants of health that are structural in nature. Considering these barriers, a research agenda was developed from the findings and reflect the obesity health needs of this population. / Funding through Born in Bradford

This dissertation project seeks to address the sociological processes, dynamics, and mechanisms inflecting how and why U.S. society reproduces a sexually dimorphic, binary gender structure. The project builds upon the work of sociologists of gender on the doing gender framework, intersectional feminist approaches to identity formation, and hegemonic masculinity and relational theories of gender. In a 2012 article in Social Science and Medicine presenting contemporary concepts in gender theory to the health-oriented readers of the journal, R. W. Connell argues that much public policy on gender and health relies on categorical understandings of gender that are now inadequate. Connell contends that poststructuralist theories highlighting the performativity of gender improve on the assumption of a categorical binary typical in public policy, but they ignore the insights of sociological theories emphasizing gender as a structure comprising emotional and material constraints of the complex inter-relations among social institutions in which performances of gender are embedded. According to Connell, it is the task of social scientists to uncover “the processes by which social worlds are brought into being through time – the ontoformativity, not just the performativity, of gender.” This project explores the ontoformativity of gender in consideration of Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of the four domains of power. According to Collins, matrices of domination are intersecting and interlocking axes of oppression including but not limited to race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, nation, age, ability, place, and religion that reproduce social inequalities through their interoperation in the cultural, interpersonal, structural, and disciplinary domains of power. West and Zimmerman contrast gender as an axis in the matrix of oppression with site-specific roles, arguing that gender is a master status that is omnirelevant to all situations such that a person is assessed in terms of their competences in performing activities as a man or a woman. The doing gender approach has been accused of theorizing gender as an immutably monolithic social inequality. This project seeks to explicate the dynamics of gender ideology by probing its weaknesses in the interpersonal and cultural domains of power. As Collins and coauthor Sirma Bilge posit, for people oppressed along axes of gender, race/ethnicity, class, age, place, ability, and other binaries that constrain their actions in the structural and disciplinary domains of power, “the music, dance, poetry, and art of the cultural domain of power and personal politics of the interpersonal domain grow in significance.” Each of the three components of the dissertation project addresses a facet of mechanisms and processes of the interpersonal and cultural domains of power in (re)producing the binary gender structure in U.S. society. Paper #1, titled, “Integrating Black Feminist Thought into Canonical Social Change Theory,” explicates how people in marginalized social locations mount definitional challenges to their received classifications in the cultural domain of power by rejecting the consciousness of the oppressor and wielding rearticulated collective identity-based standpoints as contextually attuned technologies of power to recast historical narratives. Paper #2, with teenaged co-researcher Emma Draper, titled “Ordering Gender: Interactional Accountability and the Social Accomplishment of Gender Among Adolescents in the U.S. South,” maps how youth theorize interactional accountability processes to binary gender expectations in the interlocking social institutions of medicine, the family, schools, and peer social networks. Paper #3 is a book proposal comprising an introductory chapter. The book will tell the story of how young feminist arts-activists challenge the binary gender structure through resistance in the cultural and interpersonal domains.

Yes / Participation of community stakeholders in health research priority setting is an emerging trend. Despite this, the involvement of marginalised groups in research prioritisation is limited and where they are involved, sample sizes are small, where individuals are merely consulted with, rather than coproducing the research agenda. Without addressing power dynamics inherent in research prioritisation with marginalised groups, their engagement in the research process can be tokenistic and the resulting research agenda unreflective of their needs. This article, therefore, aims to generate knowledge on how feminist participatory action research was used to co-produce an obesity research agenda with British Pakistani women, a seldom heard population, living in deprived areas. The methodology enabled Pakistani women to be involved in all stages of the project, culminating in the co-production of an obesity research agenda that accurately reflects their unmet needs. Women’s engagement in the project led to their increased confidence, the formation of relationships that lasted beyond the research project, improvements to their lifestyles, and engagement in further research. Feminist participatory action research may be used by researchers as a guiding methodology due to its ability to improve women’s lives and develop research agendas for women’s health. / National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) Yorkshire and Humber [NIHR200166], the UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) - [MR/S037527/1], the NIHR Clinical Research Network, NIHR ARC Yorkshire and Humber / Research Development Fund Publication Prize Award winner, Jul 2023.

This study explores the subjective experiences of mothers living with HIV from Southeastern Ontario when accessing health and social services. Drawing on principles of feminist participatory action research, 5 MLWH were brought together in order to share their stories of accessing health and social services and to participate in the creation of a collage as part of the storytelling process. Intersectional feminist theory was chosen as a theoretical lens for this project to highlight the ways women’s multiple identities intersect and contribute to HIV-stigma. Emerging from the storytelling and arts based process were stories about the women’s interactions with the criminal justice system, Children’s Aid Societies, social welfare programs and women-specific supports. The key concerns that the women raised in connection to these interactions included having to re-tell their story, concerns about confidentiality and disclosure and experiencing a loss of control as a result of depending on a myriad of health and social services. In addition, the participants identified changes they would like to see within health/social services including more opportunities for peer support and an increase in services available to support the unique psychosocial challenges of MLWH. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Malgré un intérêt grandissant pour les méthodes de recherche participative, peu d’écrits abordent les défis et les opportunités reliés à la participation à ce type de projet. Ce mémoire documente le démarrage d’un projet de développement partenarial entre des acteur·rice·s au Liban et au Canada (Québec) en contexte de crises multiples employant une méthode de recherche-action participative féministe transnationale et décoloniale. Il s’inscrit dans le projet de recherche plus large appelé projet GIPS (2021-2024) mené par R. Caron en collaboration avec des chercheur·e·s, des femmes migrantes et des représentant·e·s d’organismes. Ce mémoire présente les résultats d’une analyse thématique transversale de données recueillies auprès des acteur·rice·s dans le cadre de leur participation aux activités de démarrage du projet GIPS (octobre 2021 à juin 2022) par des méthodes ethnographiques d’observation participante, un questionnaire qualitatif (N=9) et une analyse documentaire. Des défis et des opportunités reliés à la communication, au budget, à la distance, au temps, à la diversité des acteur·rice·s et à la mise en application d’un cadre féministe transnational et décolonial en recherche ont été identifiés. La matrice de domination de Collins (2000) issue de la théorie féministe intersectionnelle mobilisée comme cadre d’analyse révèle la plus faible place occupée par les femmes migrantes dans la phase de démarrage du projet. Malgré les leviers d’action déployés par les acteur·rice·s pour les impliquer, des tensions inhérentes à la solidarité transnationale et aux contraintes structurelles persistent et appellent à la reconnaissance des spécificités propres à un cadre féministe transnational et décolonial en recherche partenariale. / Despite a growing interest in participatory research methods, little has been written about the challenges and opportunities of participating in this type of project. This master’s thesis documents the start of a new partnership development project between actors in Lebanon and Canada (Quebec) in the context of multiple crises employing a transnational and decolonial feminist participatory action research method. It is part of a larger research project called the GIPS project (2021-2024) led by R. Caron in collaboration with researchers, migrant women and representatives of organizations. This research project presents the results of a cross-sectional thematic analysis of data collected from stakeholders as part of their participation in the GIPS project's start-up activities (October 2021 to June 2022) using ethnographic methods of participant observation, a qualitative questionnaire (N=9) and documentary analysis. Challenges and opportunities related to communication, budget, distance, time, diversity of actors, and a transnational and decolonial feminist approach to research were identified. Collins' (2000) matrix of domination mobilized as an analytical framework from intersectional feminist theory reveals the weaker place occupied by migrant women in the start-up phase of the project. Despite the levers of action deployed by the actors to involve them, tensions inherent to transnational solidarity and structural constraints persist and call for the recognition of the specificities of a transnational feminist and decolonial approach in partnership research. / على الرغم من الاهتمام المتزايد بأساليب البحث التشاركي، لم يُكتب سوى القليل عن التحديات والفرص في هذا النوع من المشاريع. توثق أطروحة الماجستير هذه بداية مشروع تطوير شراكة جديد بين الجهات الفاعلة في لبنان وكندا (كيبيك) باستخدام طريقة بحث العمل التشاركي النسوي العابر للقومية والمناهض للاستعمار. إنه جزء من مشروع بحثي أكبر يسمى مشروع GIPS (2021-2024) بقيادة روكسان كارون R. Caron بالتعاون مع الباحثين والباحثات والمهاجرات وممثلي وممثلات المنظمات. تهدف أنشطة بدء المشروع إلى توثيق تجارب النساء المهاجرات اللائي يعشن في أوضاع هشة في لبنان وكيبيك في سياق أزمات متعددة. يعرض هذا المشروع البحثي نتائج التحليل الموضوعي المقطعي للبيانات التي تم جمعها من أصحاب وصاحبات المصلحة كجزء من مشاركتهم/ن في أنشطة بدء مشروع GIPS (أكتوبر 2021 إلى يونيو 2022) باستخدام الأساليب الاثنوجرافية لملاحظة المشاركين/ات، والاستبيان النوعي (N = 9) والتحليل الوثائقي. تُظهر نتائج البحث التحديات والفرص المتعلقة بالاتصال، والميزانية، والمسافة، والوقت، وتنوع الجهات الفاعلة، والنهج النسوي العابر للقومية والمناهض للاستعمار. تكشف مصفوفة كولينز (2000) للسيطرة التي تم الاستعانة بها كإطار تحليلي من النظرية النسوية التقاطعية عن المكانة الأضعف التي تحتلها النساء المهاجرات. على الرغم من استراتيجيات العمل التي نشرتها الجهات الفاعلة لإشراكهن، لا تزال التوترات الملازمة للتضامن العابر للقومية والقيود الهيكلية قائمة وتؤدي إلى صياغة توصيات لمتابعة المشروع.