Compare methods

	Feminist Participatory Action Research	Participatory Action Research
Field	Gender Studies	Qualitative
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1987	1940s (Lewin); PAR as distinct tradition formalised ~1970s–1980s
Originator	Patricia Maguire; Colleen Reid and Wendy Frisby	Kurt Lewin (action research foundations, 1940s); systematised for participatory contexts by Orlando Fals Borda, Paulo Freire, and William Foote Whyte
Type	Participatory, emancipatory feminist research methodology	Qualitative research method
Seminal source	Reid, C., & Frisby, W. (2008). Continuing the journey: Articulating dimensions of feminist participatory action research (FPAR). In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Action Research (2nd ed., pp. 93–105). SAGE, London. ISBN: 9781412920308	Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Participatory Action Research. Springer.
Aliases	FPAR, Feminist PAR	PAR, community-based participatory research, collaborative action research, participatory inquiry
Related	4	6
Summary	Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) fuses the participatory action research tradition — in which communities investigate their own conditions through cycles of action and reflection — with feminist commitments to analyzing gender power, foregrounding marginalized women's knowledge, practicing reflexivity, and producing concrete social change. Pioneered by Patricia Maguire in 1987 and later systematized by Colleen Reid and Wendy Frisby, it dissolves the usual divide between researcher and researched, positioning community members as co-researchers who shape the questions, the process, and the outcomes.	Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a qualitative, community-centred methodology in which researchers and community members collaborate as co-investigators to identify a shared problem, take deliberate action, observe outcomes, and reflect critically on results — cycling iteratively until meaningful change is achieved. Unlike conventional research that studies people from the outside, PAR treats participants as active agents who co-own the research process, the knowledge produced, and the practical interventions that follow.