Sin é (That's it)

37 women of Ireland.

78 hours of interviews.

866,769 words transcribed.

19 months of analysis.

8,812 individual sections highlighted (coded) and organised according to their relevant themes.

And Sin é*, I’ve finished analysing the Women of Ireland Project interviews.

The 37 interviews (and me)

What this means, practically speaking, is I now have an organised data-set. A place I can go to quickly retrieve what women have said about a particular topic or theme. For instance, if I wanted to write about the ‘strong woman’ archetype, I can open my laptop, go to the software where I do all the analysis and double-click on a ‘code’ I’ve called ‘Strong Women’ and Ta-Da, up will pop all the sections across all the interviews where I highlighted (i.e. coded) that something about the concept of ‘Strong Women’ was being discussed (If you want to know how that highlighting and coding process, and the analysis of the interviews, worked I made a video about it here).

It also means I can see what themes across women’s stories are particularly prevalent and can join the dots between women in terms of common experiences and what contributes them.

For instance, the theme “Self-Silencing” is, by far, the most prevalent, common and numerous theme to have emerged out of women’s stories. I’ve coded (i.e. highlighted) 111 individual parts of women’s interviews as describing moments where they have Silenced the Self, meaning they silence, reduce, censor, suppress and de-prioritise their own needs and desires to maintain relationships (i.e. not cause a fuss, not upset another, avoid conflict, keep the peace etc.) whether that be with family, a significant other, friends, or Irish society at large.

As many who have been subscribing to this Substack for a while will know, getting to this point — to a stage where I can tell you what the most prevalent theme is because I have (finally) finished analysing all of the interviews — has been an enduring task for me. One that I have repeatedly felt I was failing at because it was taking me so long (or longer than I had planned). And for that reason and more, it has not been a journey without crises.

A few months ago, while attending a workshop with an author who had published a beautifully written and very successful book based on interviews with over 40 women, I came very close to abandoning my method for analysing and organising the interviews entirely. That this author had interviewed so many women and successfully written and published a book about it in the space of three years (the same time it’s taken me to just interview women and analyse those interviews) astounded me. All I wanted to know was how did she do it?

In the Q&A I asked, ‘How did you analyse all those interviews and pick what you would write about’? I hung on every word of her response, awaiting the magic answer to ‘my problem’ (my slowness) and her response threw me into a week-long crisis of self-doubt.

“I mainly went with my gut”, she began, before continuing to describe a process of intuiting which parts of each interview were key to the story that she wanted to tell, and the story that was emerging out of the conversations she’d had with women. She trusted the “power of memory” — of how the things that stood out to her in each interview were the things to focus on and write about. Slowly, as she generously continued to share her approach, I realised that she had not bothered with a line-by-line analysis of each interview. There was no organising of each word, sentence, phrase, description and moment into themes. She trusted her memory and gut to do that for her and when she needed to write about a particular topic, she listened back to the parts of interviews that had stood out to her.

It could not have been further from the approach I had taken in working with the Women of Ireland Project Interviews. Consequently, I left that workshop questioning my entire mode of working. Doubting the necessity and relevance of everything I had done in the name of ‘analysis’ and wondering “Had I wasted time”?

This upward social comparison, where I compare myself to others who I believe are better, hold more authority or are superior to me in some way (usually because I respect them or they have achieved something I want to achieve) is something I engage in often. It’s a character flaw I have to constantly watch for because it can cause me to believe that what they are doing is ‘right’ and what I am doing is ‘wrong’. And then I think I should change my course entirely to emulate what they have done, because they are better, so, they know what is best.

She had trained as a journalist and, by her own admission, such a training meant she was skilled in sifting through huge amounts of information, finding the story she wanted to tell, and distilling it quickly.

I have trained as a qualitative researcher, a social scientist. Taught to be methodical and rigorous. Thorough. To leave no stone unturned if you can help it (although, of course, I will because I am human and I can’t do it all).

After that workshop, a different light seemed to cast itself on all that thoroughness (my line-by-line analysis of each interview). I was struck with the realisation that there was another way (!?) A way that used intuition and gut to feel your way to the points in women’s stories that were important and vital.

I didn’t abandon my thoroughness though. I couldn’t. I continued. Word-by-word, line-by-line. Scribbling notes in margins. Paraphrasing the core meaning of things said on a page. Making memos and notes to myself about little revelations that were turning into bigger revelations the more interviews I analysed. The time I have been able to spend with each word, each feeling, each moment, each experience and each revelation in women’s stories has been invaluable. Allowed it all to seep into my unconscious.

And you would think, after 19 months of analysis, I would be able to say: “Here, these are the top 5 most important things in the Women of Ireland Project interviews”, or “Here’s a list of the top 10 things I’ve learned from women”. I’d love to be able to write you such a Buzzfeed-esque list of highlights. I had envisioned this post being that very thing. But I can’t, because it wouldn’t be right.

They’re complicated, women’s stories. They are full of contradictions. What one woman says or has experienced about being a Woman of Ireland, another’s experiences will contradict. There are clear themes and commonalities, but there’s no linear story. No neat little list of ‘This is what it means to be a woman of Ireland’. Only nuance and gorgeous messy complexity.

And sure, isn’t that life?

All that complexity, all the detail, the depth of analysis, does however, leave me with some hard decisions to make. Analysing and organising all the interviews was just the beginning. Now, I have to decide what ‘story to tell’, because I can’t tell it all (that would make for a very unwieldy and unreadable book).

The time has come to “kill some darlings”.

And I don’t like it.

Choosing what to write about also means choosing what to leave out, and when leaving out means leaving out parts of someone’s very precious story they have told you, this feels even harder. Like a decision I can’t make.

It’s in this space of uncertainty that I have come to see why that workshop author said she ‘went with her gut’ to make decisions about what to write. Because trusting your gut means you can find a road that feels right even when it feels wrong.

Onward.

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* Sin é, pronounced Shin-ay, meaning “That’s it” as Gaelige (in Irish)