FPAR Academy

Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) is a conceptual and methodological framework that enables a critical understanding of complex oppressive structures and relationships that undermine social justice. The origins of FPAR can be traced back to Kurt Lewin’s work on Action Research in the aftermath of WWII, when he developed social research methodologies for empowering minority groups to take action for change. 

FPAR builds on the work of Participatory Action Research (PAR), a method of critical pedagogy developed by prominent thinkers from the Global South since the 1970s (such as Paolo Freire in Brazil and Orlando Fals-Borda in Colombia). PAR critiques positivist approaches for being elite and exclusive to academic researchers and aims to empower oppressed people to participate in social investigation and take collective actions for social change. 

PAR is a powerful tool for challenging entrenched, oppressive structures and power relations. Therefore, PAR has an affinity with the feminist mission of dismantling patriarchal domination. However, feminist scholar Patricia Maguire in her seminal doctoral work in 1987 critiqued the praxis of PAR for being androcentric (or male-centered) and ignoring patriarchal structures that limit women’s participation in social processes. Over the last few decades feminist researchers and activists have integrated feminism and PAR and developed the methodological paradigm of FPAR. 

FPAR integrates key feminist notions into the process through the following key dimensions as articulated by Reid and Frisby (2008):

1. centering gender and women’s experiences while challenging patriarchy; 

2. accounting for intersectionality; 

3. honoring voice and difference through participatory research processes; 

4. exploring new forms of representation; 

5. reflexivity; and 

6. honoring many forms of action.