FROM THE FIELD
Experiences of sexual harassment during fieldwork
Is the process of fieldwork in social sciences research gendered? What does it mean to be a woman researcher, working independently in the field?
By Debarati Choudhury (She/Her)
This is my story, as a woman student researcher, working in rural Telangana in 2017. The fieldwork was a part of my experiential learning programme with my Institute. We were placed in a small village in Mahabubnagar district and my work involved travelling to nearby villages in the district that had some development projects being conducted by my host organisation, and conducting open-ended interviews with the people.
While some of these villages, where we travelled for the fieldwork, were located near our accommodation, others were not. This required us to rely on public transport to reach the ‘main road’, a road located no less than 40 minutes from my place of accommodation. From the main road, we had to get on shared-autos* to travel to the villages located in the interiors.
Throughout my stay, I would make it a point to wrap up my fieldwork and return to our village before sunset to ensure that I was not breaking any societal norms being a woman and staying out alone in the dark. One such day, while I was in a village located 30 km away with a friend, we had to extend the stay for an hour.
A group of Adivasi women had finally begun to freely talk to us about their challenges both inside and outside the home, and sunset was not a good enough reason to leave that important discussion unfinished. We also wanted to differentiate ourselves from the government officials, who, in the words of our interviewees, were ‘always in a hurry to get things done’ and ‘unwilling to spend extra time’ with them to really listen to their concerns. Therefore, it was crucial for us that we did not merely treat them as subjects, collecting data and stories purely for our academic pursuits. We wanted to challenge the power dynamics inherent in ethnographic research through a relationship of reciprocity and mutuality and to build horizontal alliances, therefore, by staying and spending time*. We had to ensure that they could claim our time, as much as we depended on their availability for our research.
Our decision to stay back also meant that we were likely to be unsuccessful in finding rickshaws and autos to make our way back. And as expected, that evening we didn’t find an auto for nearly an hour, until we finally gave in to a driver demanding twice the rate for travel. Soon the realisation crept in that we were the only women on the road and it was well past 8 pm. There was a sense of urgency to return to our accommodation because it was plainly unsaid but understood — we are not supposed to be out after sunset. We also did not wish to appear as women who did not care for these unsaid, unspoken norms. We finally got into the auto, both of us instinctively seated ourselves near the aisle; these seats allow the convenience to jump out.
It must have been close to 15 minutes or so, when, to our horror, 5 men in their late 20's-early 30’s boarded the auto. My friend and I initially objected since we were paying double the amount as it is; however, the driver seemed to know our vulnerability, and we knew arguing with him was no longer an option. We continued our journey, now sitting together, with a man beside me, two in the front and two behind us.
Those 30 minutes were probably the longest half-hour that either of us had to live, in constant fear, anxiety and agony. We were touched at every turbulence, I was groped by the man beside me, and my friend was sure the men behind us were pulling at her salwar. We did not scream, or object. There was no living soul on our route through the Nallamala forests. We let ourselves be violated and rationalised that this was better than resisting and possibly being raped. When we finally reached our accommodation, our payment was rejected by the auto driver. Instead, we were thanked since ‘we had done enough’. Neither of us has been able to forget those words, that evening, that one auto ride, till date.
Like many colleagues that I have worked with over the years, I did not speak of my harassment to anyone, nor did it find a place in my research writings. There was a fear of how it would portray me as a researcher if it would affect my career. Most importantly, I felt a huge burden to stay silent because I wondered if sharing about this would further lead to stereotypes being produced and perpetuated about the people living in the area. Then again, why did this burden need to be shouldered by me alone? Why did I hesitate to talk about my abuse, a real violation of my body as a woman?
The experiences of gendered violence and sexual harassment that researchers face while conducting fieldwork often do not get a space in their research output (ethnographies, survey results, etc.). There is a prevalent practice of self-censoring*, which exists to ensure that the fieldwork fits in the prescribed tropes of ‘good research’. This forces researchers to carefully edit and sanitise their experiences of gender-based violence*.
Now when I look back, I wonder that in my pursuit to create horizontal alliances with my interviewees, was I overtly digressing many patriarchal and sexist societal norms that I was supposed to abide by? My relational vulnerability* exposed how my privilege as a researcher did not safeguard me from being disciplined as a woman staying out and working after sunset. Was I assaulted for the same indiscretion? Was this an exercise of power just like that on any other woman residing in that area? I also made decisions that I would not have in any other circumstances — sharing my contact number, accepting an invitation to walk into a stranger's house, and others — to look for more opportunities to talk and newer potentials for research. Did they consider this a reason enough to violate me?
Along with being mindful not to reproduce a hierarchy while conducting fieldwork, there needs to be a strong emphasis on locating the researcher and her body in the whole process through an embodied intersectional praxis. Otherwise, we shall continue to marginalise experiences of gendered harassment and violence and risk producing a gender-neutral researcher without an adequate analysis of underlying power relations. Incidents of such sexualised violation should no longer be discarded as individual events; they are endemic to the process of fieldwork as a method of research.
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This story by Debarati Choudhury takes us deep into the question of vulnerability as a women researcher and asks how women researchers navigate the fieldwork. Are we doing it differently, cautious and mindful of our own vulnerability?
Sources and Acknowledgements by the Author
- The concept of shared autos is prevalent in Telangana. Regular three-seater autos accommodate at least four to six passengers inside with the occasional parallel seating attached to the front bar, and ferry passengers to destinations. This is a low-cost mode for passengers and high earnings for the drivers.
2. Suggested reading: “Waiting, power and time in ethnographic and community-based research. “ Qualitative Research, vol. 18, no. 4. Palmer, Jane, et al. 2017, pp. 416–432, doi.org/10.1177/1468794117728413.
3.“Toward a Fugitive Anthropology: Gender, Race, and Violence in the Field.” Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 4: 537–65. Berry, Maya J., et al. 2017. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.05.
4. Harassed: Gender, Bodies and Ethnographic Research. California: University of California. Hanson, Rebecca and Patricia Richards. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520970953.
5. “Sexual(ized) Harassment and Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Silenced Aspect of Social Research.” Ethnography 18, no. 3: 396–414. Kloß, Sinah Theres. 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138116641958.
6.“Violence against Women as ‘Relational’ Vulnerability: Engendering the Sustainable Human Development Agenda.” UNDP Human Development Report Office, Occasional Paper. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Kabeer, Naila. 2014.
