%O Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. This is the accepted manuscript version of the article published in the February 2016 issue of Sociology; the final published version is available on the Sage journals website at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038515580253
%T Interviewing Women Again: Power, Time and the Gift
%P 195-213
%L discovery1492895
%D 2016
%J Sociology
%N 1
%K feminism, interviewing, methodology, motherhood, social research
%V 50
%A A Oakley
%X The starting point for this article is a contribution to qualitative research methodology published in 1981 called ‘Interviewing women: A contradiction in terms?’ This was based on the experience of interviewing women in a longitudinal study of the transition to motherhood – the Becoming a Mother (BAM) study (1974–79) – and was subsequently much cited as helping to establish a new paradigm of feminist research. This article re-appraises the arguments put forward in ‘Interviewing women’, discusses its incorporation into a narrative about feminist methodology and presents and comments on new data collected in a follow-up to the BAM study conducted 37 years later. It argues that the complex political and social relationship between researcher and researched cannot easily be fitted into a paradigm of ‘feminist’ research, and that the concepts of a gift and of friendship as components in this relationship deserve more attention.