SOCI 2730: GENDER IN SOCIETY
GENDER PROBLEMS PROJECT PART I
Due Friday of Week 6 (5/9) by midnight
The goal of this first assignment is to become familiar with the core debates and perspectives on your chosen research topic. This assignment will also help to identify some of the gaps in this research, and to prepare you to get out and conduct your own original research on this subject.
Overview:
You will write a concise, well-crafted paper. This paper will 1) explain your motivation for investigating this gender problem or controversy and the importance of this subject, 2) will summarize key findings from your review of three (3) peer-reviewed, scholarly sources in sociology, and 3) will identify gaps, conflicts, overlaps, and contradictions in this literature.
This paper will also prompt you to use this review of literature as a preparation for conducting your own original in-depth interview research. The entire paper should approximate 5-6 pages total. Your paper should be double-spaced, standard 11-12 point font, 1” margins.
Sources:
These should be peer-reviewed, scholarly sources primarily in sociology (Wikipedia and blogs might be fascinating, but these are not primary sources for this project). Please start with the following databases on the library website (link to databases is on library homepage):
- Sociological Abstracts
- SocIndex with Full Text
You can also look at the Gender Studies Database, as this is a great place to find scholarship on gender. Just make sure to search this database by peer-reviewed sources.
Structure of Paper:
Please address each question in the following order:
- Give a short overview of why you chose this gender problem to study. What is your own motivation for studying this issue? Why is it important to study, in a broader social sense? (½-3/4 page)
- Summarize the major goals, debates, and conclusions of each of your articles/book chapters/books. What are the major findings/arguments of each of your sources? (3-4 pages).
- Put your sources into conversation with each other and compare/contrast: do your sources conflict with each other on certain points? If so, which are these? Do they draw the same conclusions (and if so, what are these common conclusions)? Do they advocate the same solutions, or different solutions? (1/2- 1 page).
- Brief reflection on the literature you’ve reviewed: what are the most convincing arguments or findings, in your view? What are the main reasons why this gender problem persists? What should be done about this problem? What are the most promising solutions proposed in these readings? (1 page)
- Projected research for Gender Problems Project Part II: How will this literature review inform your upcoming in-depth interviews? Which concepts in the readings would you like to explore more in your interviews, and why? Are there any major gaps in this research that you would like to fill with your own in-depth interview research? If so, what are these? Give at least 3 themes/concepts/subjects inspired by this literature review that you would like to explore in your in-depth interviews. (1/2-1 page)
*You will need to create a bibliography to place at the end of the paper. Any format is fine, as long as the complete information is listed for each source. The following are examples for how to cite books, articles, or chapters in edited volumes:
BOOKS:
Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Roberts, Dorothy. 1997. Killing the Black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. New York: Vintage Books.
ARTICLES:
Fiese, Barbara H. and Gemma Skillman. 2000. Gender differences in family stories: Moderating influence of parent gender role and child gender. Sex Roles, 43, 5-6, September, 267-283.
Acker, Joan. 1990. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society 4,2: 139-158.
CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES:
McRobbie, Angela and Jenny Garber. 1975. Girls and subcultures: An exploration. In Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson (eds.) Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in postwar Britain. London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.
