Includes bibliographical reference and appendix.

Preface
This Handbook puts together in one volume, essays, analyses andreflections of social researchers on methodologies that are gender-sensitive,participatory and feminist user-friendly.It is intended forhealth and social researchers who wish to integrate into their ownstudies, designs and methods of collecting and anayzing data that areinformed by feminist perspectives and experiences in the field. Asdocumented in our 1997 publication Feminist Research Experiences: Acasebook,these new approaches privilege a woman's own experienceand construction of her life, and provide a more egalitarian relationshipbetween the researcher and the researched.
These new modes of knowing and researching are products of whatNorman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (1994) have termed "a quietmethodological revolution" that has taken place in recent years,withthe blurring of disciplinary boundaries and the shifting of paradigmsin the social sciences. This shift, for example, has involved a critiqueand rethinking of established norms of objectivity and neutrality inpositivist research. Feminists in particular advocate a connectedrelationship between researcher and researched, and a greaterinvolvement of women as subjects and participants in a research cumaction design aimed at generating knowledge and taking action tochange women's situation. Participatory research with a feministstandpoint,as this approach has been described by academic researchersand social science practitioners in NGO and PO communities,hasenriched the Philippine experience in the last decade or so. In the fieldof health care and social development, this has led to a reexaminationof government policies and programs for gender biases andinsensitivities to women's status and welfare.This has also led to astronger advocacy for women-centered perspectives and methodologies