It is essential that you have a precise topic that you can discuss in detail within the page length limits for the essay. Review the topic areas listed below and select an area of interest within each one. Note that these lists of subtopics are not meant to be exhaustive. If you have another idea for an essay topic, you MUST contact your tutor and discuss before submitting a plan.
Topic 1: Representations of Women in the Media
Select one type of media: advertising, film (genre or specific film), television series or genre (e.g., reality TV), sports, news, online context (web or social media), PC or online game.
Topic 2: Violence Against Women (Gender-based Violence)
There are several approaches to narrowing down this topic. You may choose to focus on one type of violence, one context in which violence occurs, or one of the following: policing and/or the criminal justice system; programs and services for victims/survivors (e.g., shelters, rape crisis lines, counselling; anti-violence campaigns and education.
Topic 3: Women and Paid Work
Choose one type of work or work sector, or one issue related to paid work: employment or pay equity (policies and practices); the glass ceiling; parental leave; harassment in the workplace; part-time or low-waged work; non-traditional work sectors for women (e.g., engineering, IT, policing, trades); sex work.
Topic 4: Women and Family
Choose one issue related to family and caregiving: childcare and/or eldercare; the double day (balancing work and family); mothering and mother blame; single parenting, lesbian-led families.
Topic 5: Women and Health/Healthcare
Choose an illness or one of the health or healthcare issues facing women in Canada today: access to healthcare (e.g., regional, rural); dieting or eating disorders; reproductive rights or issues (e.g., birth control, fertility, pregnancy, abortion, natural birthing); sexual health; alternative approaches and models; environmental health issues; addiction and health.
Topic 6: Transnational Perspectives
Choose one topic that affects women in global-local contexts: immigrant domestic workers; workers in free-trade zones; sex tourism; sex trafficking.
Intersectional Analysis
Your essay must apply an intersectional analysis. As you cannot possibly discuss all groups of women affected by the issue you have selected to write about in a short paper, you need to narrow your topic further. To this end you should select a particular group of women. The group you select may be privileged OR marginalized by the intersection of gender with race/ethnicity/indigeneity, class, sexuality, or ability. For example, if you are discussing dating and hook-up culture in Canada, you may focus on female college students, many of whom are white and middle class.
Even after selecting one group of women as the focus of your essay, you may still have to narrow the scope of your essay even further as there may be too much information to cover.
Too broad: Aboriginal Women and Health
Appropriate: Access to Health Care on First Nation Reserves, OR
Indigenous approaches to healing from intergenerational trauma.
Consider the following questions when planning and researching your essay:
Which theoretical concepts will be helpful to develop an analytical framework that explains the problem you have identified from a feminist perspective? To this end, the first section of your essay after the introduction will begin by explaining the workings of patriarchy in relation to your broader topic. The specifics of the framework you build will depend on your topic. If you are focusing on Aboriginal women, for example, you will draw on key ideas from anti-racist feminism. Your framework is not meant to be a summary of a particular theory (e.g. liberal feminism).
What kind of background information, including history is needed to understand the present situation?
What is the scope of the problem? What are some of the causes (depending on the topic, this could be partially addressed in Q.2)? How have the lives of this group of women been negatively affected?
What types of resistance and feminist advocacy are being undertaken to address the problem? How effective are these in leading to positive change?
Your research essay should be eight (8) typed/word-processed, double-spaced pages (approximately 2000 words). This word count does not include the title page and the reference list. The number of references or secondary sources you cite will depend on the topic. Nonetheless, you will be expected to include references to a minimum of three scholarly sources that do not come from the course materials. One of those sources must be an article from a scholarly journal published in the past ten years.
All in-text citations and references must conform to APA documentation style.
Textbooks used in course:
Cranney, B. & Molloy, S. (Eds.). (2015). Canadian woman studies: An introductory reader (3rd ed.). Toronto: Inanna Publications & Education Inc.
Mandell, N. & Johnson, J. (Eds.) (2017). Feminist issues: Race, class, and sexuality (6th ed.). Toronto: Pearson Canada Inc.
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