Transdisciplinary qualitative research and gender issues in pandemic times: Female researchers’ experiences

Female qualitative researchers address issues that go beyond the results of our research by developing reflections through writing and autoethnography, problematising these processes, and developing new possibilities. Just like the desired social impact we want to achieve with our findings, there is also the impact that this work has on our academic trajectories and our personal lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a change in the way of life of most people and in the way of understanding life. At the same time for those of us who were doing field studies, it produced new challenges, limitations, and opportunities that have led us to rethink the ways of researching and communicating, of posing our research questions, and of making our voices even more visible as women in the academy. This chapter addresses gender issues located during COVID-19. It develops elements of methodological analysis through autoethnography based on two experiences of Chilean qualitative researchers who developed research projects with government funding in times of pandemic. It highlights how research experiences using virtual tools can make visible the widening of gender gaps for women researchers and how using transdisciplinary feminist research deepens the data on women’s gendered experiences. This chapter contributes to discussions on explorations of gender as a tool for methodological analysis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.