The importance of gender in the field

This chapter critically examines fieldwork as a gendered experience, where gender-based violence can be one of the main obstacles to overcome in data production by women researchers, and those who identify as such, in the Global North and the Global South. It analyses how this violence impacts women during fieldwork preparation, experience, and exit while imagining and thinking ahead of strategies to mitigate it. The field is, for women researchers, an emotional and embodied space that starts before entering a field site and ends after exiting it while engaging with data. Women's right to fieldwork is analysed through different case studies, including the case of migrant single-mother researchers affiliated with academic institutions in the Global North. Drawing from decolonial feminist Black and indigenous epistemologies from Latin America, the art of fieldworking implies acknowledging that what happens in the field site happens on women researchers’ bodies in a close connection. Furthermore, collective organisation opens opportunities for redressing and envisaging fieldwork as a joyful experience, which women are also entitled to.