إسهامات النساء في الأبحاث المتعلقة بالسلوك المعلوماتي : تجديد في المقاربات
Scientific research on informational behaviors and practices, which began in the mid-20th century, has undergone significant changes since then: researchers have adopted new theories and approaches, practiced new methods, and expanded to broader social categories. These developments seem to result from the increased participation of women in research, and the empirical studies that followed and continue to this day have reinforced these new trends. Indeed, studies on informational behaviors outside the academic or professional context, particularly those focused on issues relating to women's daily lives, have taken into account social and interactive processes of knowledge construction, adopting the socio-constructivist paradigm and preferring the notion of informational practices over informational behavior. They have also considered informal sources of information and horizontal and reticular circulation of information, addressing the question of the cognitive authorities. We shed light on the contribution of women researchers to the evolution of the theories and methodologies applied to the study of information behavior and practices, and ask if this contribution can be characterized as a feminist approach to research. We then focus on the Arab world to determine if these feminine approaches have had any impact on its scientific output in this field. Our research is based on a review of the literature on information behavior. We identify the main contributions to the evolution of research and examine them in light of the distinctive features of the feminist approaches to research in social sciences. We then do an overview of Arab works, written in English, to establish if Arab researchers have followed the same path. A comparison of the approaches used to study the informational practices with the main characteristics of feminist approaches reveals their many shared epistemological and methodological qualities. While the authors did not declare themselves feminist, they have adopted a way of knowing that can be considered at least feminine. Nevertheless, their innovative approaches did not resonate much in works coming from the Arab world, perhaps as a result of the very history of Arab information sciences and of their professional origins. (Author’s abstract)