Interviewing elite women professors: Methodological reflections with feminist research ethics

Introduction

In recent decades, interviewing elites has been often used to generate relevant data in journalism, social sciences and human geography research (e.g., Desmond, 2004; Kezar, 2003; Smith, 2006; Phillips, 1998). Researching elite members demonstrates contrasting patterns in aspects such as gaining access and trust, preparing for the interview and interacting effectively. For junior researchers, elite interviews are particularly challenging (e.g., Conti and O’Neil, 2007). This article presents my methodological reflections on how feminist research ethics enable me as a novice researcher to address the difficulties of conducting interviews with 22 women professors in both science and social sciences disciplines in Hong Kong.

Even though interviewing elites is a popular research method in social science areas, it is very different from studying peers and down (Desmond, 2004). Many studies of elite interviews have focused on the practical techniques to overcome difficulties of defining elites, locating and gaining access or conducting interviews with significant power imbalance (e.g., Goldstein, 2002; Harvey, 2010, 2011; Hertz and Imber, 1995; Lilleker, 2003; Mikecz, 2012; Peabody et al., 1990). Another part of the elite interview methodology in the literature has centred around social dynamics, power and the researcher–researched relationship (e.g., Morris, 2009; Puwar, 1997; Smith, 2006). This type of study generally draws attention to social disparities related to gender, race, class and cultural hegemony in the interview process.

Feminist research is defined by its research questions (whether it primarily concerns women’s life and experience), by the theoretical lens of the project, and by the use of feminist research methodology. With the initial goal of helping to address the injustice that women face, feminist research has evolved into a knowledge paradigm including the feminist subjectivity, ontology, epistemology, theory and ethics, rather than merely a specific method of collecting information (Wickramasinghe, 2009). Feminist research goes one step further in examining the research process by arguing that the power dynamic between the researcher and elite informant not only forms the interview process but also shapes knowledge production – that is, ‘the relationship between power, epistemology and methodology is transparent and made explicit in feminist research projects’ (Conti and O’Neil, 2007: 67).

Feminism provides a series of guidelines for both feminist and non-feminist research (studies not focusing on feminist research questions and theories). This article takes my research project on Hong Kong women professors’ intellectual leadership as an example to elaborate how feminist research methods and ethics can inform novice researchers to improve quality of the study and optimise the research process. The paper first introduces the feminist methodology and research ethics and my study about women scholars’ intellectual leadership in Hong Kong; and second, it elaborates how the feminist approaches are integrated into the research design and fieldwork to enhance the flexibility, reciprocity and interactiveness of data collection in elite interviews.

Feminist methodology and research ethics

Feminist epistemology and methodology are two important dimensions of feminist research originally related to women’s lives and experiences. Such research can be summarised as follows: ‘by documenting women’s lives, experiences, and concerns, illuminating gender-based stereotypes and biases, and unearthing women’s subjugated knowledge, feminist research challenges the basic structures and ideologies that oppress women’ (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2013: 7). Sandra Harding (1987) highlights three main features of feminist research: focusing on women’s experiences, researching for women’s empowerment and using reflexivity in the research process. Feminist methodology criticises traditional positivist research for its lack of objectivity, its lack of value and the detached relationship between the researcher and the researched. It has been argued that feminist methodology can be an important supplement, adding women’s experiences and voices, critically examining the hierarchy and bias of the research process and correcting inequalities (Cancian, 1992). This methodology advocates inclusiveness, situatedness and reflexivity (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2013).

This study applied the feminist research ethics proposed by Ackerly and True (2010) as ‘a methodological commitment to any set of research practices that reflect on the power of epistemology, boundaries, relationships, and the multiple dimensions of the researcher’s location throughout the entirety of the research process’ (p. 2). They suggest that feminist research ethics contribute to educating researchers about attentiveness of power, boundaries and relationships, which is appropriate for both feminist and non-feminist research. These feminist methodological principles can be applied through different stages of research design, literature review, data collection and generation, data analysis, as well as writing and publication. In this article, the primary focus is on feminist reflections on the conceptualisation of the key research concept, preparing and conducting the interview, and the post-interview efforts for data analysis.

Indeed, power is a multi-layered concept, including the power of knowledge and the power of epistemology. It is shifting, influenced by the identity of the researcher and the researched, the situation and specific occasions. Being attentive to boundaries requires researchers to constantly reflect on limitations, such as those affecting our imagination and constraining our views about the problems. As feminist research ethics question static, objective and fixed subject-participant boundaries, many types of boundaries need to be examined with deliberations on the research questions and the disciplines of researchers. Hence, researchers should be aware of intersectionality, that is, ‘any situation, person, or research phenomena can be understood only in terms of intersecting and overlapping contexts and social forces such as race, age, gender, sexuality, income, nationality, historical moment, among many others’ (Ackerly and True, 2010: 30). It has been recognised as a valid contribution to feminist inquiry (Davis, 2008). ‘Relationships’ here include the relationship between the researched and the researchers and relationships between members of the research community. Based on the guiding principles of feminist research ethics, this study focuses on three dimensions of power, boundaries and relationships in elite interviews with women professors.

The asymmetry in power between the interviewer and interviewees is inevitable in elite interviews, regardless of the strategies used (Desmond, 2004). It influences research from the early stages of design and access to the later stages of interview conduct and analysis. Indeed, both those studies engaging feminist methods (e.g., Conti and O’Neil, 2007; Millen, 1997) and those that do not (e.g., Herod, 1999; Hertz and Imber, 1995; Odendahl and Shaw, 2002) have taken into account power imbalance in interviews. Non-feminist scholars have mainly discussed micro-politics in power relations and social dynamics among interviewers and interviewees. Comparatively, some feminist scholars (e.g., Kezar, 2003; Puwar, 1997; Smith, 2006) have systematically problematised this power shift in interviews throughout the research process. Kezar (2003) advocates to rethink a set of principles in terms of commitment, mutual trust and empathy of elite interviews from a feminist perspective. These debates have enriched the methodological literature on elite interviews theoretically and empirically.

Discussions about feminist research approaches to interview elite women in higher education, especially from the perspective of young researchers, is still under-researched. A few studies highly relevant with my study in terms of the theoretical lens and key concepts demonstrate some methodological concerns but lack the discussions of feminist research. The first research is Zuckerman’s (1977) research on Nobel laureates in the United States, one of the most classic elite studies in higher education. Zuckerman has addressed some methodological challenges of interviewing ultra-elite respondents and suggested feasible strategies, such as thoroughly preparing the interviews in advance. Constrained by her sample of ultra-elites, very few women elite participants were recruited. Another relevant studies are Macfarlane’s (2013) project of intellectual leadership of full professors and his recent research with Macfarlane and Burg (2018) on intellectual leadership of women professors in U.K. As an established male professor, Macfarlane did not have the same concerns of junior researchers and these studies did not include feminist methodological considerations. The other relevant research about senior women leaders’ life stories in Hong Kong (Lam, 2007) did not account for its methods (e.g., sampling, access, the interview process) from the feminist perspectives.

Thus, this article aims to inform emerging researchers on how to apply the lens of feminist research methodology to address the barriers of interviewing up, especially in higher education and in the East Asian context. The following texts present the research procedures used to define elite participants as intellectual leaders, gain access, prepare the interviews and interact with the participants in the field. In each section, I refer to the regular practices of feminist and non-feminist research in elite interview studies and illustrate what I did during my project with a focus on power, boundaries and relationships. In the end, I summarise and conclude why feminist research ethics are beneficial for interviewing women professors.

Researching intellectual leadership of women professors

The Hong Kong-based research explores the conceptualisation and development of the intellectual leadership of women professors through different academic disciplines. In recent decades, increasing numbers of women scholars have become influential knowledge producers and academic leaders in academia. However, the percentage of senior women professors were surprisingly low compared to the overall population of women academics in Hong Kong higher education (around 40%), with only around 12% of them reaching the full professor rank and fewer as chair professor (Aiston and Yang, 2017). In the discourse of neoliberal universities in Hong Kong, scholars have encountered increasing pressure to comply with the marketisation, commercialisation, and managerial practices in universities. Female academics are in the relatively disadvantageous status because of gender biases and discriminations in universities and the academic communities (Morley, 2016). They have to struggle and strive to advance their academic journey by seeking opportunities and protecting their spaces and freedom. So the study asks the question: how do women scholars view and develop intellectual leadership?

Professors’ intellectual leadership, as one type of informal leadership, refers to the competence of academics to make important and open inquiries, perform research that might challenge the academic community’s authorities, cross disciplinary boundaries, connect universities and other sectors and advocate for social justice. It means informal and non-hierarchical leadership in higher education, different from academic leadership aiming at institutional goals and dealing with management issues. According to Macfarlane (2013), this concept indicates multiple roles – knowledge producer, academic citizen, boundary transgressor and public intellectual.

By applying the cumulative (dis)advantage theory (Merton, 1968, 1988; Zuckerman, 1997), my study intends to investigate individual women professors’ academic trajectories as intellectual leaders. This theoretical lens has been used to investigate the social saturation of scientists. Research findings indicate that there were different trends for women professors to establish intellectual leadership. Their epistemological academic practices and institutional features have a profound effect on the perceptions of women professors on intellectual leadership and their career paths. Four patterns have been identified according to their diverse pattern to accumulate advantages in different aspects (including knowledge production, teaching and mentoring, services in the universities and the discipline, knowledge exchanges and social engagement). Type A professors often worked in hard and applied sciences and they managed to gain recognition and rewards strategically by focusing on research in early scholarly life. The other three groups of women professors in soft and pure research areas or interdisciplinary subjects and were inclined to accumulate advantages in middle or senior career stages. They relied on a wider variety of academic activities such as teaching, mentoring and public intellectual activities to increase their visibility. Type B professors intrinsically concentrated on research-wise advantage accumulation while Type C had broader concerns of applying knowledge in the society. Type D tended to develop intellectual interest later in professional practices and saw academic career a pragmatic opportunity for their job advancement.

Defining intellectual leaders as elite scholars

In a presentation of my ongoing project in a faculty postgraduate research conference, I realised that one of the pitfalls of elite interviews is defining who is an elite (as stated in Richards, 1996; Mikecz, 2012). The different definitions of elites are embedded in discourses, such as industries or geographical regions. Moreover, the meaning of the group changes and inexperienced researchers may feel less legitimate to define the elite group. Extant studies have involved political elites (e.g., Berry, 2002; Goldstein, 2002; Peabody et al., 1990; Richards, 1996), business elites (e.g., Harvey, 2011; McDowell, 1998) and professional and scientific elites (e.g. Millen, 1997; Stephens, 2007; Zuckerman, 1972). Elites can be likened to those with ‘abstract notions of power and privilege, generally in connection with certain identifiable individuals or groups of individuals’ (Odendahl asnd Shaw, 2002: 3). Some of the elite members are in the senior executive positions in the governmental sectors or large companies; some play active roles in nongovernmental agents with special expertise, while others are more invisible and not institution-based. For instance, in the context of the globalised genetic material market, Parry (1998) applies the term ‘hybrid elites’ to define those who possess critical knowledge beyond traditional organisations and are ‘informal, hybridised, spatially fragmented, and hence largely “invisible” networks of elite actors’ (p. 4). Unlike women Member of Parliament as in Puwar’s study (1997), female professors in my study may be deemed less ‘powerful’ in terms of control of public resources. Full professors are regarded the elite members among academics (Zuckerman, 1977). Compared with ‘hybrid elites’ in Parry’s study, professors possess particular expertise (which may be applied in corporations, governments, and the community beyond traditional institutions) but they are usually affiliated with higher education institutions. In this sense, intellectual leaders imply both authority in the formal academic rank and the informal power influencing in the academic community and the wider society.

The definition of an elite should be closely related to the research scope. Zuckerman (1972) defined the subjects of her study as ‘ultra-elites’ as Nobel Prize laureates who were living in the United States at that time. Ultra-elites are ‘distinguished by their small relative and absolute numbers and their high visibility; they are regarded as an elite by other high-ranking individuals and organisations, and they are preeminent among scientists in achievement, authority, and rewards’ (p. 256). Unlike Zuckerman’s object-respondents with a very clear-cut standard, my research on women scholars as intellectual leaders involves a complicated process to contextualise the cases. Full professorship has been used as a criterion for intellectual leaders with an excellent academic reputation and seniority in Macfarlane’s studies (2013). However, as indicated earlier, intellectual leadership as a type of informal leadership anchoring the intellectual interest and expertise of scholars, it is disparate with formal institutional leadership. Thus, this sampling standard possibly excludes potential intellectual leaders who are at the lower academic ranks but have strong influence and recognition outside academia.

To determine who should be defined as intellectual leaders, I reviewed a wide range of studies related to relevant concepts, including academic leadership, managerial leadership, scientific leadership and intellectual leadership, in higher education and other contexts. Through iterative consultations with my supervisor and a few scholars in Hong Kong, I co-authored an article discussing intellectual leadership with my supervisor (Oleksiyenko and Ruan, 2019). Scholars as intellectual leaders accentuate ideas as the essential matters that are studied, explored, discussed and debated, taught, published and exercised in daily practices. However, even though intellectual leadership implies the power of ideas and refers to publication-based authority in higher education, scholars do not take the role as intellectuals but develop their speciality first (Roberts, 2007). When they accumulate enough competence and recognition in the field and the institution, some of them start to enjoy more academic freedom and take more academic responsibilities. The competence and recognition largely overlap with the criterion of full professorship. Therefore, I decided to adopt full professorship as the primary criterion for recruiting participants in line with Macfarlane (2011, 2013). Besides, two supplementary indicators assisted in identifying intellectual leaders for my study. First, the potential participants’ research impact factors in Google Scholar or Web of Science were taken into consideration. Second, the sustainability and activeness of research engagement over the past three years were referred to, including publications in academic journals, presentations at local and international conferences, research grant awards, knowledge exchange activities and the supervision of postgraduate research students. These two indicators may exclude professors who deviated from the faculty member trajectory and held administrative positions at a later stage of their career.

Surprisingly, the potential interviewees had their interpretation of intellectual leaders. Self-recognising as an intellectual leader or aiming to be one can be taken into consideration. A few professors rejected my invitation because they did not think they fit the standard. For instance, one professor in history replied to my email invitation as follows: ‘I am afraid I am not the right person for you to interview, as I have never pursued “intellectual leadership”. I never want to lead others, not even my own students. I may give them some guidance, but more often we share insights. “Leadership” is never an idea that I find appealing’. As discussed earlier in the article, intellectual leadership is defined as the kind of informal leadership that is distinct with formal academic leadership with the institutional titles (e.g., the dean of the faculty in universities, or senior officer in the government and companies). Women tend to show modest attitudes of their accomplishment even though they are competent enough (Guillén et al., 2018), especially in East Asia, with the influence of Confucian Heritage Culture (Gao, 2003). Given the different understanding of intellectual leadership, it might also rule out some proper participants.

Gaining access to professor interviewees

Gaining access for elite interviews is difficult, especially for junior investigators. It takes efforts to attract elite participants’ interests and their trust. In this section, I emphasise transparency as one aspect of feminist ethics in the email invitation and face-to-face invitation. Also, I note the confidentiality issue with potential participants’ vulnerability and so to discard snowball sampling as the outreaching method. This strategy to increase successful access to elite participants aligns with the practice of feminist (e.g., Conti and O’Neil) and non-feminist researchers (e.g., Harvey, 2011).

Email invitations and face-to-face invitations were the primary ways to contact the potential interviewees in the study. Sending invitation letters is the primary recruiting method. A formal invitation letter and the informed consent form were prepared to present the researcher’s information and the study in layman’s terms. Some professors expressed interest in the study and asked questions, such as the meaning of the form of recording and the use of data. Accordingly, I responded promptly to explain that I would only audio-tape the interview with their consent and ensure the anonymity and confidentiality by masking personal information (e.g., affiliated institutions and titles of publications). These justifications reduced their concerns and convinced them to participate in the study. Further negotiation of confidentiality and anonymity also happened in the interview and will be presented in the following parts.

Except for email invitation, the second method I used to access the potential respondents was to attend open seminars and conferences where elites gather (e.g., Shenton and Hayter, 2004; Harvey, 2010). To gather information about academic activities, I had subscribed notifications of academic conferences, seminars and workshops to seek for the opportunity to attend the events and listen to their speech before explaining the research to potential professors directly. I also sent formal invitation emails to some professors after approaching them in person. Eight participants were successfully recruited by this approach. The downsides were the time constraint to attend all relevant seminars and conferences and the limited opportunity to explain the topic to the potential participants after these events, especially with other people crowding around the speakers at the end. Yet face-to-face invitation opportunities increased my chance of introducing my research to the potential interviewees compared with email invitations alone.

Snowball sampling has been deemed appropriate for elite interviews under certain circumstances but seems less relevant in my case. As Goldstein (2002) suggested, conducting an elite interview in a small place like Washington, DC, may bring more participants to the researcher after successfully interviewing one. However, feminist methodology argues that snowball sampling can be biased by hierarchy and power and it is only an acceptable method when researchers ‘cannot identify subject-participants by other means or when those other means might have a different and politically problematic particular bias’ (Ackerly and True, 2010: 157). As discussed in the session Defining Intellectual Leaders as Elite Scholars, I have decided to use full professorship and academic achievement to identify potential participants. With the growing censorship of individuals in Hong Kong since 1997, faculty members may be concerned about taking part in ‘sensitive’ or ‘controversial’ research projects (‘women leadership’ may look sensitive and controversial for some professors). Besides, the relationship between universities, the market and the state in Hong Kong may affect the willingness of academics to engage in extramural activities (Law, 2019). The relatively small circle of academics in Hong Kong may raise their concern about undesirable consequences involving confidential information. Thus, I did not use the snowball method as my primary approach since then.

Preparing for elite interviews

Previous studies on elite interviews (e.g., Harvey, 2010; Liu, 2018; Mikecz, 2012) have underlined the importance of careful preparation on the informants’ cultural and educational backgrounds, life history and career trajectories. Gaining information of the elite participants gives new researchers more confidence before entering the field and mitigates the power gap to a certain level. However, the preparation by non-feminist scholars primarily focuses on the publicly displayed information (e.g., the faculty academic profiles and CV). Using feminist ethics, I highlight the need to prepare for elite interviews with multiple forms of materials inclusively. It may enhance researchers’ understanding of participants’ experience considering both academic life and personal stories (if any). It helped the researcher grasp more details that validate or contrast the data collected in interviews.

Curriculum vitae (CVs) have been used as the main data source or as a supplementary tool to inform or enable interviews and narrative studies about academics (e.g., Cañibano and Bozeman, 2009; Bawazeer and Gunter, 2016). Dietz et al. (2000) confirmed that CVs are a source of ‘useful, concrete information on the timing, sequence, and duration of jobs, work products (e.g., articles, patents, and papers), collaborative patterns, and scholarly lineage’ (p. 421). First, I reviewed each informant’s academic profile on their faculty webpage, the university scholar hub (if available) and online CVs to prepare a pre-interview analysis. It allowed me to know the participants’ career trajectory and add personalised questions to the semi-structured protocol. In doing so, I was able to grasp their basic information in advance (e.g., education credentials, professional trajectories, managerial positions, research awards). During each interview, I could give prompt responses when they recalled their experience, as Bawazeer and Gunter did (2016). In one case, this question was framed as follows: ‘You have received the international award in [research field] and have been ranked among the 1% top scholars, according to Google Scholar. Could you please share some details of how you did this?’ The participant reacted quite positively to this specific question because she thought I had done my homework and treated her interview time seriously. It should also be noted that the CVs are not paralleled for every participant because some of them only showed a few selected publications in their profile.

Referring to other types of sources instead of the merely academic profile was suggested by the first interviewee in my study. When I asked her about the most influential person in her academic life, she reminded that I could read the acknowledgement of one of her books and find relevant lines about her supervisor. Taking her advice as part of my preparation for the interview, I searched both formal and informal sources of participants. It also demonstrates an opportunity of co-constructing research approach in the project.

Through getting familiar with CVs, sometimes I was able to capture contrasting details between the rhetoric words in professors’ CVs and their authentic experiences. A professor in linguistics and language education displayed many detailed academic activities in her CV, such as knowledge exchange activities in the communities, and being a judge for competitions in secondary schools. When I asked how such extramural experience played a role in her development of intellectual leadership, she confessed that she was not keen about participating in these activities. Writing them in her CV is only for displaying her commitments in services (which is largely required by universities). Comparing the publicly available information and their utterances is helpful to link participants’ accounts and their experience (as emphasised in Silverman, 2017). It facilitated me to analyse the data and think about what pattern she developed her intellectual leadership.

In addition to CVs, I extracted more information from the acknowledgement sections of authored and edited books, doctoral dissertations, interview scripts available online, YouTube videos and other sources. The search for ‘marginalised’ evidence of the professors’ academic lives sometimes proved to be fruitful. In the acknowledgements of books or dissertations, scholars are likely to describe critical moments in their research, personal and professional growth and influential people, such as peers, friends, supervisors, collaborators and family members who have influenced their careers. For instance, a participant in the field of history wrote in the postscript of her book that ‘finding new perspectives from history data become such a delight and comfort amid the difficult midlife crisis’. When I mentioned this statement in the interview, the respondent smiled and admitted that it had been very hard and elaborated her experience in details.

In some cases, I found articles in newspapers and magazines, online public lectures and videos about local knowledge exchange activities. These materials revealed the participants’ social concerns since their youth and their motivation to do these research projects. An outstanding example was that a professor in social sciences who had multiple videos online, such as knowledge exchange workshops and drama performances, and other informal interviews by her students. Her intense engagement in the community demonstrated her leadership in public debates. In the interview, she criticised that the current assessment for scholars was too narrow so intellectual leadership was undermined. Getting a deeper understanding of the professors’ life, their orientation of intellectual leadership in different academic roles facilitated our conversation and built the rapport. Hence, this approach has added some leverages to the researcher and mitigate the power imbalance to some degree.

Interacting effectively with women professors

The power imbalance is one of the critical challenges during elite interviews. After preparing the interviews, my focus moved to the careful analysis of the researcher’s positionality, reflexivity and power relationship in the field. Feminist methodological considerations have been applied to make decisions regarding ethical dilemmas during interviews. There are many ethical concerns in the field practice because of the vulnerability of the participants and researchers. The complexity of participant characteristics has received increasing attention in qualitative inquiries (e.g. gender, race, age, social class, cultural and disciplinary contexts), also called ‘intersectionality’ (Davis, 2008), as discussed in the session of Feminist Methodology and Research Ethics. During my interviews with these women full professors, I experienced different situations of power relations: (a) I am also a woman, (b) about age, social position and academic achievement, my status was lower, and (c) as the one who initiated the project, I would have access to the personal information and interpret the meaning of data. The following paragraphs address these three aspects in order.

In the interview relationship, gender is often mentioned as an attribute of power imbalance. A relatively non-hierarchical relationship seems more likely for women researchers, such as a ‘sisterly’ relationship with the interviewees, as suggested by McDowell (1998). Nonetheless, gender is not the only cause of power inequality. With different attributes among researchers and participants, with more shared attributes (e.g., gender, race and other identities), the interview relationship will be more equal, with reduced social distance and increased empathy between the two parties. When interviewing international elite participants, different original geographical and cultural backgrounds make the researcher an ‘outsider’ (Mullings, 1999). Therefore, the statement that ‘being a woman means easier to interview women’ is biased as Puwar (1997) agreed when she interviewed MPs in the UK. The effect of gender interacts with that of race, as these two factors are potent indicators of power and culture (Archer, 2002).

My positionality as a relatively young female researcher was prone to attract the sympathy and understanding of senior women academics, especially those in the humanities and social sciences. As a result, six female faculty members whose research involved qualitative methods or whose research students had similar difficulties in recruiting participants showed explicit support to me. When I thanked a professor from the education faculty for her time to participate, she smiled and said, ‘unless I know absolutely nothing or feel very uncomfortable about a particular research topic, I always try to accept interview invitations. I know how difficult to recruit interviewees. I was there and some of my students are there’. Under such circumstances, we seemed to form a same-gender mentor–mentee relationship. In addition, the interviewees and I may have shared similar women’s experiences, such as low self-esteem or lack of confidence at the beginning of an academic career. Yet, my experience may have been less relevant in understanding their more mature roles in academia and in the family. Individual professors have different personalities and various interpersonal styles. Some of them may not appreciate feminist ideas or consider them worthwhile (Millen, 1997). In Hong Kong, the public considers its gender equality relatively high in the globe, ranking No. 7 in the Human Development Reports in the United Nations (2019). So gender may not be seen as an essential variant for them.

When I was in this relatively inferior position, multiple attempts were made to balance the power between me, a novice researcher, and these esteemed academics. It is more difficult for a young researcher to be taken seriously by elites (the same challenges faced by Conti and O’Neil, 2007; Odendahl and Shaw, 2002). Dressing professionally, presenting my name card and introducing myself calmly and adequately were the initial steps in making an excellent first impression. During the first few minutes of the interviews, the concise explanation of my study and my quick responses to their questions enhanced the interviewees’ confidence in me. When some of the interviewees were curious about my findings, I briefly shared some of my preliminary results with them. Such a reciprocal exchange of information set the rapport tone for the following conversation. For instance, one professor in chemistry was surprised by the status quo of women professors in higher education in Hong Kong and told me her different assumptions or her knowledge of women academics from other countries. With my previous publication that sent to the interviewees in advance, some women professors became more interested in the topic. About half of them, some from the humanities and social sciences and a few from the medical school, read the article in advance and expressed their opinion on its main arguments. According to a professor in radiology, she had never considered that gender was an issue until she became the head of the department. She said, reading an article in a different field opened her eyes. After the interview, she also asked me to send some relevant articles for her reference. By sharing my opinions and research, they were likely to be convinced by my credibility and to form a ‘transformative relationship’ with me (Kezar, 2003). These discussions also became a learning opportunity for both sides, which echoes feminist research ethics.

I expected that my lack of disciplinary knowledge in some fields might lead to obstacles in communicating in some interviews. This ‘outsider’ identity in terms of disciplinary content could alienate the interviewers. When I interviewed a life scientist, I asked her how she overcame challenges in the scientific career and whether she might seek help from and discuss research with others. She responded impatiently, ‘of course I discuss this with others, my colleagues and my students. Who doesn’t discuss research problems with others?’ I inevitably experienced some embarrassing and awkward moments. After that aggressive answer, she might realise that I did not understand the daily practices of scientists, and she explained in detail how scientists usually research in a group and how she led research students. Throughout the interview, she questioned my interview protocol and study design very candidly. She disagreed with the idea that there was any gender discrimination in the careers of women scientists and thought that my study was biased from the beginning. Her very short answers to my open questions at the beginning of the interview reduced my confidence, similar to Harvey’s experience (2010). This incident became a ‘deliberative moment’ in my research (Ackerly and True, 2010: 43); that is, a decision-making moment in the research process at which I was forced to reflect on how to overcome obstacles. This experience proved to be an excellent opportunity to refine my study design and questioning techniques. This lesson reminded me that when non-feminist participants (who do not agree with feminism and do not see gender inequality) encounter a feminist researcher, they may feel judged and threatened by feminist standards (as discussed in Millen, 1997). However, the unusual emotions and conflict experienced during the interview helped to reorient the sense of the interview (Thuesen, 2011), which helped me gain more confidence for subsequent interviews.

Another common problem in elite interviews is that respondents may establish a set of diplomatic wordings and stories for interviews, creating the public relation version of a story instead of a personal view on the key concept of the event, as they are ‘trained to represent their organisation to the outside world’ (Mikecz, 2012: 484). It is important to note that interviewees have ‘no obligation to be objective and tell us the truth’ (Berry, 2002: 680). With feminist ethics in mind, researchers are prone to interpret it as the tactics for participants to protect themselves and their organisation. The interviewers should identify the situation and try to find another way to get more authentic answers. In an interview with a scholar from social sciences, I read her previous interview script online with another interviewer. I realised that she was telling the same story in one previous interview. Out of courtesy, I did not interrupt her but waited until the end of the interview. With the recorder turned off, I tried to probe a little more about these previous questions. The next time I encountered a similar situation, I told the interviewee that I had read her interviews with others a few years ago and that I would like to ask questions based on my understanding of her online information and these scripts. As a result, the professor reacted with ease and tried to add some details to her story. This kind of direct disclosure showed my careful preparation, echoing the idea that researchers should not be overly concerned about rapport in certain situations and simply ask the necessary direct questions, as elites usually do (Ostrander, 1995; Smith, 2006).

The power relationship sometimes leans towards the researcher’s side. Elite interviewees are rarely considered “vulnerable”, but the confidentiality and anonymity of interview data can be the tipping point for power change (Kirsch, 1999; Lancaster, 2017). At the beginning of the interview, I explained the informed consent form and asked respondents to sign. Some of the participants agreed to get follow-up questions after the interview and required transcribed script afterwards, while others did not want to involve further. Considering the inform consent form based on positive research paradigm appears inadequate according to feminist research approaches (e.g., Eyre, 2010), anonymity and confidentiality were carefully negotiated in the ad hoc manner in the field. Those in the fields of social sciences and familiar with the qualitative interview method tended to be more comfortable while those in the positivist research paradigm were often wary. Some participants in my study felt concerned about how data would be used and how their identity could be protected especially at the data analysis and data presentation stages, which requires more negotiation (as discussed in Conti and O’Neil, 2007). For example, two professors in the interview talked about that their children had special education needs, which affected their academic career and their mobility. Before they went into details, they said to me ‘don’t put this part into your data’. Another example is that one professor in psychology studies denied my request for recording and answered questions strictly following the interview protocol I sent to her in advance. With feminist ethics in mind, I understood their concern. Then I informed the details of the process and the practical method used to conceal personal information, and use cross-case analysis to increase the ambiguity of individual identity.

Second, some participants’ discussion was constrained by audio recording. Unlike Harvey (2011) who chose not to record to put the elites at ease to talk, I chose to use a recorder to capture the emotions, the pauses, the laughs and the awkward moments (Mikecz, 2012). These nuances were later documented along with interview transcripts and became one part of the contextualised data. Whenever I felt that the participants were reluctant to talk about sensitive issues, I tried to follow up on the questions at the end, after turning the recorder off. Sometimes ending the interview a few minutes earlier allowed for an informal discussion after the recorded session. At that point, the interviewees were more familiar with my research scope and more willing to reveal some personal stories and experiences. After each interview, I wrote down my field notes as soon as possible with thick description of the environment, the interview setting, the emotion and attitude of the respondents and myself, as the contextualised data.

Concluding remarks

Feminist research ethics provide a set of principles for the researcher to think about power, boundaries, exclusion and inclusion, relationships and situatedness in elite interviews. They guide the researcher through planning, keeping track of the choices throughout the research, and accounting for these decisions when the research is completed. They emphasise the ‘continuity in the thoughtfulness that you exhibit about your project’ rather than ‘the consistency of research method from plan to published account’ (Ackerly and True, 2010: 38). They support new researchers to understand the complexity of elite interviews and facilitate the inclusiveness of the research process.

Adopting feminist research ethics, I have made improvements in my research project. Feminist research methodology stresses reflecting on the research process and co-producing data with respondents. I tried to operationalise every step of the research process to address difficulties in elite interviews: defining respondents as intellectual leaders with multiple considerations, ensuring transparency to gain access and trust; fully utilising multiple sources of information to prepare for interviews; interacting with considerations of intersectionality and dynamics of power. Taking advice from participants, dealing with emotional frustration, navigate spaces for dialogues, and sharing my knowledge and preliminary findings with participants made the data collection process a more interactive and collaborative procedure.

From my experience of applying feminist research methods and ethics in interviews with senior women professors in Hong Kong, I find it beneficial to create more space for negotiation and disagreement, to ease the anxiety for a novice researcher, and to embrace the uncertainty of the research. At the same time, core values of feminist ethics (such as the researcher–researched relationship, co-constructing meanings) need to be contextualised in the specific category of elite interviews (the expert type elite here) and the cultural background. The investigators have to be realistic that respondents may have different political and ethical views about the research topics and the researcher. The experience of interviews with women professors in this article covers my experiences before and during the interviews. Further discussion should be continued to explore the application of feminist research ethics in other stages of research and in other contexts.