Anthropological methods are based on the premise that researcher need (up to a certain extent) to conform to local social norms. Yet, this process may remain difficult to negotiate in the field of gender, as this often implies an inherent paradox between one’s position as a woman, with a subordinate status in many local societies, and one’s position as a scholar. We argue that, for a female researcher in male-dominated field sites, building strategies of data collection amount to crafting a staged identity, an effective frontstage, that will both offer protection and lend credibility. The researcher not only responds to the role that interlocutors want her to endorse, but also actively seeks social acceptance with regard to the type of data that she wants to collect. We argue that the staged identity, by creating a female subject with the required social and moral qualities, makes data collection smoother. The researcher may appear less ‘powerful’ or less ‘threatening’ for local interlocutors, which becomes a critical asset when she works in fields and/or with data that are viewed locally as male prerogatives. The frontstage, however, may be at odds with the researcher’s own values and a feeling of alienation may emerge over time, especially when doing fieldwork in societies with strict hierarchical gender norms. Thus, the reflexive process of staging gender often remains part of the silences of ethnography.