of feminist theory in informing conventional positivist-oriented research and the role of positivist-oriented research on feminist questions in informing feminist theory, even feminist theory that challenges the epistemological commitments of positivism. The Numbers Do(n’t) Always Add Up: Dilemmas in Using Quantitative Research Methods in Feminist IR Scholarship Laura Parisi, University of Victoria doi:10.1017/S1743923X09990201 How might one reconcile feminist international relations theorizing with quantitative methods, if they can be reconciled at all? This question has occupied a central place in the field of feminist international relations theory 1 since its inception, and while it is not my intention to rehash it in its entirety here, 2 my story sheds light on the difficulties that feminist IR scholars may face in choosing the quantitative route. My essay highlights these conundrums from different stages of the research process: formulation of the research question, selection of a research method, usage of quantitative methods, and the dissemination of the findings. I conclude with questions for further consideration. My discussion is informed by a number of different vantage points. My Ph.D. is in political science and I have been trained in international relations — both mainstream and feminist or conventional feminist, as Mary Caprioli (2004) refers to it — as well as in quantitative methods. Nevertheless, my institutional home for much of my career has been in Women’s Studies departments, where I regularly work with colleagues and students from many different disciplines, such as english, biology, sociology, history, and film making. I am rarely recognized in Women’s Studies as a “feminist IR scholar” since this identification really has theoretical and perhaps methodological meaning only in the field of international relations. Working in this context has allowed me to reflect 1. This has also been a key concern of feminist economists (Barker 2006; Jackson 2002). 2. See, for example, Tickner (2006); Caprioli (2004). 410 Politics & Gender 5(3) 2009