Gendered Politics of Knowledge Production: A Man's experience of researching womens lived experiences in Zimbabwe's Agrarian Setting

Abstract

The study focuses on the gendered politics of knowledge production in Masvingo District. It is based on my personal experiences of generating knowledge from female interlocutors despite my maleness. The field work experiences problematise the discourse raised by traditional epistemology that male researchers would not 'excavate', represent and present women's authentic voices. The study challenges the traditional positivist feminist position about male researchers as being less positioned to know, present and represent women's voices due to lack of personalised exposure to the 'real world' of femininity. By adopting a feminist epistemological 'lens', and the biographical approach in which women land owners gave their life history narratives, I argue that the critical aspects about my interactions with female participants was my ethnicity, 'nativity' and many other social
factors other than sex and gender, although I acknowledge its importance. It was the female 'gatekeepers' who received me and appreciated my presencein that community than the male gatekeepers who treated me with political suspicion and mistrust. The study demystifies the notion that only women can investigate and give an authentic voice of fellow women, hence, it concludes that depending on the context and other field realities,
male researchers may represent women's voices since men and women do not lead separate lives in agrarian settings.