This article maintains that all research involves crossing (i.e., researching across di ¶ erence) and then explores how scholars have approached issues of cross-group feminist research. The article is divided into three major sections. The rst section explores issues of women's diversity and their meaning for cross-group feminist research. The second investigates concerns raised with regard to contradictions inherent in this type of research. The third section reviews and discusses a number of strategies feminist and other scholars of qualitative research have used to address problematic issues and contradictions involved in cross-group research.The man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over puddles, or gives me the best place -and ain't I a woman ? … I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me -and ain't I a woman ? I could work as much and eat as much as a man -when I could get it -and bear the lash as well ! And ain't I a woman ? [italics added] (Truth quoted in Flexner, 1975, p. 91) During a meeting for women's rights in Akron, Ohio, a freed slave, Sojourner Truth, responded with the above words to an Anglo clergyman who argued that women were unable to vote because they were too delicate. Just as Sojourner's words served to explicate the incongruency of her lived experiences with that of Southern White females a century and a half ago, contemporary feminists have problematized the adequacy of a singular de nition of woman. Di ¶ ering conditions of life de ne what constitutes being a woman.The subject of di ¶ erence and how di ¶ erence should or should not be researched and represented is the focus of discussions among many feminists today (Fine, 1994 ;Reinharz, 1992 ;Sawicki, 1994). Theories of di ¶ erence, of course, are not new to feminism. There has been much discussion over the years concerning the nature and status of women's di ¶ erences from men (e.g., biological, psychological, cultural). Contemporary theories of gender di ¶ erence have also emphasized the shared experiences of women across the divisions of race, class, age, and other di ¶ erences. In such theories, the diversity of women's lives and activities have often been lumped into the category '' women's experience, '' presumably in an e ¶ ort to provide a basis for a collective feminist subject, emancipatory theory, and identity politics. More recently, however, it is the di ¶ erences among women (e.g., race, class, and sexual orientation) that have moved to the forefront of theoretical discussions.In this essay I review and analyze how qualitative researchers have approached issues of cross-group feminist research (i.e., researching across di ¶ erence). First, I explore the issue of women's diversity and what is meant by cross-group feminist research. I then take up issues and concerns raised with regard to contradictions