(WHY) DOES AFRICA NEED FEMALE RESEARCHERS?

Gender issues as widely discussed at all political levels mainly manifest female rights and claims. Male issues are rarely covered under this topic except if those refer to males’ misconduct. No information could be found... [ view full abstract ]

Gender issues as widely discussed at all political levels mainly manifest female rights and claims. Male issues are rarely covered under this topic except if those refer to males’ misconduct. No information could be found that gender issues refer to the value of having female researchers in ‘hard core science’ in order to bring to research results a female touch without loosing international academic recognition and acknowledgement from their research communities. Normally, female researchers active in the gender movement focusing in their research more on gender issues than on research in science, technology engineering or mathematics (STEM). Female researchers in the STEM disciplines are very much in to the topics that they can’t bring thoughts to the gender movement. However, female researchers are primarily females with the specific female attitudes of rating relationships higher than rules and norms, thinking through their views of selfishness and responsibility (Preissle, 2006).

Feminist research ethics demonstrate that female researchers are biased in how researchers daft assumptions, design questions, conduct procedures and build on data to reflect to social values. No research could be found, how feminist research ethics impacts research subjects, others than in social sciences.

This research aims to find out the differences between female and male researchers in their research works and to visualize how female and male specifics could be characterized through out their research.

This research is a field research in form of a proposal writing workshop for researchers and graduate students in Ethiopia. In preparation of the workshop indicators for the female research approach will be elaborated in a literature review. All proposals have to address one and the same topic. The submitted proposals will be measured against the set indicators in a first step. In a second step the different sections will be scrutinized against each other and finally analysed on the overall added value.

 The findings will contribute to learn about the specifics of female and male approaches in the different sections of a research proposal. The strengths of both, female and male researchers will be captured and amalgamated in a concept to demonstrate how to build strong research teams that are able to focus on the society at large and communicate the results in the female way to citizens, who are rarely interested on research issues.

  Overall this research envisages to find the strength of female researchers and make them more visible in sectors, which are primarily dominated by females such as agriculture, education or health. Based on these findings training programmes can be elaborated to encourage females to pursue their carriers as researchers and contribute to improve especially the lives of ‘voiceless’ African females in the globalized world.