Authentic representation?: Using video as counter-hegemony in participatory research with working-class women

This paper examines the processes and outcomes of employing video in a feminist participatory research project at a Sure Start programme in the United Kingdom. Sure Start is a government initiative targeting young children and their families in order to ameliorate health, social and educational disadvantages. The project worked with a group of poor working-class mothers who went on to produce their own visual accounts of their experiences of raising children in poverty. The paper looks at the hegemonic representations of poor working-class women in the popular media and discusses how the use of participatory video can challenge these taken-for-granted images, thus providing an 'authentic' alternative to commonly held assumptions.