New Perspectives in Science Education

It is known that Ethnography is a multi methodical type of social research. Ethnography utilized by feminist science as the suitable type of research for the knowledge production which results from the use of the analytical category of gender and it focus in social realities of women, which the dominant academic research often ignored or misinterpreted. Social research and especially ethnography in any case they are not inherently feminists research methods. At the same time, during the exploration of women’s lives feminist ethnographers understood that they could not lead to reliable conclusions if they ignore men’s lives as the two sexes are in interaction and negotiation.

Folklore of gender has demonstrated that the most folklore researches lead to the conclusion that traditional communities consist mainly of men and the usual reference to women defines them as mothers or wives. Feminist folklorists are invited through ethnography to exceed the male orientation of mainstream research and through the study of the different categories of women in the same community or folk group they try to highlight women’s real life situations, to make them visible, to hear their words, to value their contribution to society.

As life stories constitute a borderline (always feminist) meeting between researchers and respondents women, in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of the Aegean in the last eight years ethnographic researches of women’s narrative around their reproductive experience (pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum) are in progress, with often shocking findings that deserve to be presented. The Archive includes approximately 1500 female narratives as well as 450 male narratives concerning their family experience.

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