Breaking down the question
The question asks you to identify what is distinctive about the feminist method — in other words, what sets it apart from conventional, positivist social research. The command word Comment invites you to lay out these features and then offer a measured evaluation of them.
Note carefully that feminist scholars themselves debate whether there is a single feminist method at all. The stronger position, associated with Sandra Harding, is that what is distinctive is less a unique technique than a distinctive methodology and epistemology — a way of framing the research relationship, the researcher and the very definition of knowledge. Success depends on capturing this and not reducing the answer to a claim that feminists simply prefer qualitative methods.
At 10 marks you should be concise but substantive: identify three or four genuinely distinctive features, illustrate them briefly, and close with a balanced comment.
How to approach it
Open by clarifying that feminist research arose as a critique of mainstream sociology, which it charged with being androcentric — treating men's experience as the human norm and rendering women invisible or distorted. Locate the distinctiveness at the level of methodology rather than a single tool.
Then set out the core features: the primacy of women's lived experience as a starting point; standpoint epistemology, the argument that knowledge is situated and the vantage point of the subordinate can be more revealing; the insistence on reflexivity, in which the researcher's own values and position are made explicit rather than hidden behind a false neutrality; and a non-hierarchical, non-exploitative relationship between researcher and researched, often oriented towards emancipation. Ann Oakley's rethinking of the interview illustrates the last point. You may draw on our research methods notes for the wider methodological context.
Conclude with a comment that weighs the contribution against the criticisms.
Model answer
Feminist social research emerged from a critique of conventional sociology as androcentric — built on men's experience yet presented as universal. Its distinctiveness lies not in any single technique but in a reorientation of methodology and epistemology.
First, it takes women's lived experience as the legitimate starting point of enquiry, recovering domains such as domestic labour and emotional work that positivist sociology neglected. Second, standpoint epistemology, developed by Dorothy Smith and Sandra Harding, holds that all knowledge is socially situated and that the standpoint of the subordinate yields a less distorted, more complete understanding of social relations than the standpoint of the powerful. Third, feminist research prizes reflexivity: the researcher's own values, gender and social location are acknowledged openly, in place of the detached objectivity that positivism claims. Fourth, it seeks a non-hierarchical, reciprocal relationship between researcher and researched. Ann Oakley argued that the textbook interview, which treats the woman as a mere source of data, is both ethically and methodologically flawed; a feminist interview is closer to a dialogue built on rapport and mutual disclosure. This connects to the emancipatory aim of much feminist work, which treats research as a means of consciousness raising and social change rather than knowledge for its own sake.
By way of comment, these commitments have enriched social science — legitimising qualitative depth, exposing hidden inequalities and sharpening debates about objectivity. Yet critics note tensions. The claim to a single privileged standpoint is contested by intersectional and postmodern feminists, who stress that women differ by class, race and location. An openly value-laden approach also raises the familiar charge of bias. Feminists reply, plausibly, that all research is value-laden and that theirs is simply more honest about it. The distinctiveness of the feminist method, then, is best understood as a principled alternative epistemology rather than a rejection of scientific rigour.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is testing whether you grasp that the feminist contribution operates chiefly at the level of methodology and epistemology, not merely method. Scripts that say only that feminists prefer qualitative over quantitative techniques miss the deeper point about standpoint, reflexivity and the research relationship, and will be marked down.
Strong answers name the key features precisely, anchor at least one in a thinker — Smith or Harding on standpoint, Oakley on interviewing — and then honour the command word Comment by offering evaluation, including the internal feminist critique of a single standpoint. A balanced close that treats value-commitment as reflexive honesty rather than simple bias signals the conceptual maturity examiners reward at this level.