Research

Dr. McFarland has done research in a broad range of areas over her thirty plus year career. In the early years, she did a number of projects on women’s work in the economy: women in fish plants, women in the potteries (in the UK), women in call centres as well as women in unions. Many of her projects have involved New Brunswick case studies: women in unions, women in fish plants, women in call centres, women in unions, women’s learning and training, women under NBWorks, a critique of self-sufficiency in New Brunswick and the history of labour movement/environmental movement alliances in the province. She has also written on women in the Third World: the construction of women and development theory, women in Cuba, feminism versus a human rights approach in global feminism, microcredit and women’s centres in the North and South. Finally, she has taken a theoretical perspective in papers on women and economics, social control in a fish packing town, theories of underdevelopment vis-à-vis Atlantic Canada, feminist research methodologies, construction of women and development theory, women’s learning, women and economic and social policy in Canada, law and economics, feminism versus a human rights approach in global feminism and globalization and the call centre industry.

Her current research, as part of a Work in a Warming World project based at York University, examines work in the era of climate change. As part of this, she has recently completed a paper on the experience of labour movement/environmental movement alliances in New Brunswick.