Feminist cases of nonfeminist subjects: case studies of women principals

This article examines the dilemmas involved in doing feminist research with subjects who are not, themselves, feminists. The author begins exploring these dilemmas by investigating the work and experience of women principals and then focusing on their understanding of issues of gender. The author further explores these dilemmas by critically examining her role as a researcher, her interactions with the women principals, and the tensions involved in providing/imposing an analytic frame to the data as she tried to understand and represent the experiences of her participants.