Spotting the Invisible Man: The Influence of Male Gender on Fieldwork Relations

Although there is now an extensive literature from female researchers reporting the influence of their gender on fieldwork relations there is a dearth of comparable accounts from male sociologists. In this research note we describe our perceptions of how our male gender has influenced our fieldwork in a number of participant observational studies conducted by ourselves in the last few years. We focus our observations in terms of the impact of research subjects' expectations and researchers' expectations on within-gender and cross-gender relations. Finally, we look at the way in which issues of gender and sexuality may be conflated in the process of fieldwork