The research process of this study is guided by Crotty's (1998) framework where four fundamental aspects are recognised, namely: epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology and methods. It summarises the research approach in order to gather and analyse data on how senior women managers from three different ethnic backgrounds climb to the upper echelons of management in Malaysia. As suggested by Crotty (1998), epistemology concerns how the researchers generate, understand and use knowledge in their study. Methodology informs how the combinations of research philosophy (e.g. epistemology and theoretical perspectives) with the chosen methods are decided upon and executed to answer the research questions. Methods involve the techniques and procedures for gathering and analysing data based on the formulated research questions. The epistemological stances underpinning this study are both the interpretive and feminist epistemologies, where using feminist methodological standpoint has allowed the researcher to understand the lived experiences and perceptions of Malay, Chinese and Indian senior women managers in Malaysia.
4.2.1 Epistemological – Social Constructionism and Individual Constructivism
In this thesis, the epistemological stance is underpinned by (individual) constructivism, which falls within the domain of (social) constructionism. Several authors acknowledge the ambiguities in the literature on constructionism and constructivism (Crotty, 1998; Young and Collin, 2004). Constructionism is “the view that all knowledge, and therefore all meaningful reality as such, is contigent upon human practices, being constructed in and out of interaction
between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essentially social context” (Crotty, 1998, pp 42). One can believe that concepts are constructed rather than discovered yet maintain that they correspond to something real in the world. Crotty (1998) further suggests that constructionism focuses on collective generation and transmission of meaning, while constructivism focuses on individual meaning-making. The constructivist pays attention on how individuals engage in knowledge constructions. It is claimed by the social constructionist that knowledge and meaning are socially constructed through interactions in historical and cultural contexts. Social constructionism assumes that knowledge is socially and culturally mediated through language (Schwandt, 2003), where the researcher and researched are jointly represented in knowledge creation, engaging in intersubjective meaning-making (Young and Collin, 2004).
Contrasted with positivism, the emphasis is that the world cannot be known directly, but through the construction imposed on the world through the mind that contructs reality (Young and Collin, 2004). Constructivism is considered a particularly relevant perspective for this research, as it focuses on the interaction of self and social experiences from the perspective of the individual, with a particular focus on the construction of meaning (Young and Collin, 2004). Constructivism embraces a relativist ontological stance that recognises knowledge is not value-free and that there are multiple constructed and varying interpretations of realities (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Both approaches, however, recognise the interplay of society, politics and history in how we interpret reality. This research recognises no single truth, accepting that the experiences of particular individuals (e.g senior women) can serve as one source of knowledge regarding their challenges to climb up the career ladder in the workplace. Part of my research examines the individual experience of women from the three main ethnic groups in the context of the social construction of Malay privilege. In this perspective, knowledge is gathered not by generalisations, but through indirect experiences (Guba and Lincoln, 2000), such as extending the intersectionality literature by examining how privilege could interact with the intersections of gender and ethnic status in Malaysia. Knowledge is created in a dialogue during the interaction among researchers and participants (Creswell, 2009) and attention is given to the social context in which entrenched principles of management practices are constructed. It allows the researcher like me to understand the career experiences of senior women in the public and private sectors while analysing the structures of the labour market in Malaysia.
4.2.2 An Analytical Perspective - Interpretivism
Having explained social constructionism and individual constructivism as the epistemological stances, this research employs interpretivism as a suitable analytical perspective to investigate the study of women senior managers in Malaysia. Interpretivism is always associated with constructionism and constructivism because interpretivists believe that social reality is
constructed by social actors and they rely as much as possible on the participants’ views of the situation being studied. Ontologically, they are known as relativists, who assume that multiple social realities may change as the researchers become more informed by the respondents (Guba and Lincoln, 2000).
Interestingly, interpretivists reject the assumptions made by positivists regarding the nature of human beings and ways of knowing about social phenomena. Positivism is likely to use a highly structured methodology in order to facilitate replication and is independent of and neither affects nor is affected by the subject of the research (Greener, 2008). Greener (2008) further argues that positivists are subject to criticism because facts do not always explain themselves and interpretation is required to play an essential part in explaining how social actors construct and experience this reality in their daily lives. In relation to this research, using an interpretive approach helps to interpret participants’ views based on their own backgrounds and experiences which explains how meanings are constructed between researchers and respondents as they both engage together in the world they live and work in (Greener, 2008; Creswell, 2009).
In this research, I discuss how patriarchy, intersectionality and critical mass are applied as theoretical and methodological lenses for understanding how women’s career experiences are shaped by the intersections between gender and ethnicity in the context of institutional privilege (see Chapter Three). In theorising gender and ethnicity, it is important to recognise that these are socially constructed terms. The analysis in this study reflects my attempt to interpret the research participants’ interview data by seeking how gender and ethnicity, within the context of higher managerial positions, intersect in the construction of the privilege amongst senior women managers in Malaysia. An interpretivist paradigm allowed me to tap into participants’ subjective experiences rather than framing the participants’ perspective within the conceptual lenses of dominant Western literatures. In this way, unexpected insights may be discovered that will shed new light on how women senior managers experience and communicate the intersections of their gender and ethnicity.
Adopting an interpretivist paradigm within a social constructionist epistemology acknowledges that findings are based on participants’ construction of past events in their discussions with me. Individual constructivism privileges the individual’s mental representation of his/her experiences. In doing so, I acknowledge that I am privileging the individual in this study as someone who is bounded by the social construction of Malay. This informs why researchers’ interpretations play a key role in this kind of study, bringing such subjectivity to the forefront, backed by qualitative arguments rather than statistical exactness (Creswell, 2009).
4.2.3 Methodology – Qualitative Analysis using Feminist Standpoint
This research has employed qualitative techniques located within a feminist methodological standpoint (Harding, 1989; Westmarland, 2001; Holliday, 2007; Yin, 2011). Unlike positivism that commonly approaches the fieldwork with hypotheses testing and deduction, inductive research generates meaning from the data collected in the social settings of the participants (Creswell, 2009). Also, according to Yin (2011), qualitative methodology allows the researcher to interpret the voice of women in relation to the broader social context that and thus prioritises on women’s lived experiences.
Feminist researchers are more likely to use qualitative methodology than quantitative where gathering the data personally and the more open-ended questioning, provides richer information. However, when considering adopting a feminist research methodology, I was sensitive to the fact that feminist literature, in general, has ignored minority ethnic women’s experiences in Malaysia. As a researcher studying how Malay, Chinese and Indian senior women managers have attained their current top managerial positions, I needed to take into account the significant backgrounds, educational attainment, and professional experiences those women carry to such positions. Thus, I consider the value of an intersectional feminist standpoint approach as a way of focusing on diverse women’s daily lives.
Reinharz (1992) and Maynard (1998) assert that feminism is a perspective guided by feminist theory, not a research method and there is no one correct feminist method. They further contend that feminism is primarily a tool for social change to find out not only what needs to be changed, but also how it can be changed. Though a feminist standpoint has been criticised for prioritising woman over other social categories (Hekman, 1997), I believe this approach is valuable for my research in several ways. Women’s lives need to be addressed in their own terms rather than based on male-defined theories derived from male experiences. An intersectional feminist methodological stance assists me to delve deeper than the surface to interpret social constructions and women’s variable positions in Malaysia. It raises important questions about how knowledge is produced such as by whom, for whom and about whom. Standpoint theory claims that the knowledge drawn from women’s lives can produce better accounts of society. Furthermore, a feminist standpoint methodology can be compatible with intersectionality that explores the interactions between different forms of subjugations, in the case of this study, gender and ethnicity (Collins, 2000).
Interestingly, Westmarland (2001) suggests that the usefulness of both qualitative and quantitative methods in feminist methodology should not be debated as both have their own strenghts and can generate data when connected with epistemology and analytical elements. For instance, a survey can tell that women are likely to get paid less than men (see Vinnicombe and Singh, 2003; Yukongdi, 2005; Woodhams, Lupton and Cowling, 2015), but that does not explain how this makes women feel and how it affects their lives as a whole. It should be noted
that some feminist researchers argue that the aim of feminist research is to capture an in-depth knowledge on women’s experiences (Landman 2006; Mackinnon 1982; Ropers-Huilman and Winters 2011). When feminists strive to represent gender diversity, they can attempt to create social change because, even when they are from different social and cultural backgrounds, they can develop special relationships with the people being studied. Therefore, adopting an intersectional feminist standpoint allows me to understand how Malay, Chinese and Indian senior women experience their unequal social position. This implies that knowledge is generated based on the understanding on diverse women’s experiences rather than from men’s. I believe, with an intersectional feminist standpoint, my research speaks on behalf of senior women who live in a patriarchal world that is structured by the privilege system. The following section details the specific steps taken in data collection and analysis.