How to Write an Analytical Essay in Gender Studies – All Pitfalls Explained

To start with, what is an analytical essay? The fact that the name of that essay contains two words gives us the hint that the comments of the essay will contain information from two sides. The analytical part of the essay means that we have to personally notice trends or something interesting enough to challenge or uncover within the topic itself. Therefore, essay writing is there to encourage the use of outside sources and opinions, aside from our own. Putting them together we have a personalized piece of informative writing that has support from others giving it validity.

An analytical essay in gender studies is a piece of academic writing where a student is expected to analyze gender issues with the use of other people’s researches, articles as well as his or her own thoughts and experience.

How Does the Analytical Essay Differ From Other Types of Essays?

1. An expository essay is used to express the writer’s personal response to a book, movie, event, work of art, musical composition, football game or others. The key is to explain the issue and keep the reader’s attention.
2. Persuasive essay exists to convince the reader, make him understand your viewpoint and maybe even adopt it in case of sound reasoning. The difficulty lies in providing strong evidence, not getting emotional and sentimental in order to not bore a reader.
3. The argumentative essay has something similar to a persuasive one, but the difference is that you do not directly persuade someone to rake up your opinion but present your view as opposed to others.
4. An analytical essay is about analyzing something thoroughly and providing personal feedback on it. It is crucial to support your arguments with citations from the text and quotes from other pieces of academic literature. Otherwise, it is simply not credible.

Thus, the analytical essay analyzes claims based on factual evidence in reading, analyzes counterclaims as well, explains the author’s ability to refute opposing ideas, shows your understanding of the analyzes work.

What Is the Peculiarity of an Essay In Gender Studies?

The topic of gender roles is especially important in modern times. Hense, educators assign students to investigate these topics in order to make them realized how blessed they are to live at that time, the time of personal liberty, and see how the modern generation treats their ancestors’ social and gender norms.

How to Write an Analytical Essay in Gender Studies – Choose a Topic

Unless assigned by a teacher or professor you will most likely be free to choose an essay topic. Pick something that you are passionate about or enjoy or a topic that you are well-versed in.

For example, gender inequality is an interesting field to study as far as even after women acquired a lot more rights than earlier, they are still not equal to the men in some aspects of our lives. Here are some powerful ones:

1. What are the ways of teaching small children about equality?
2. What are the gender challenges that women face during applying for a job?
3. Maternal responsibilities in modern society – challenges and transformations.

However, regardless of how interesting the topic is, it must not be trampled. The perfect topic for the analytical essay in gender studies must have some unsummarised aspects, in other words – you have to bring something new by using other people’s studies. If there is not enough material for you to back up your arguments, it is not worth taking risks. Some of the most controversial topics are:

1. Do single-sex marriages somehow influence straight couples?
2. Some people claim that in actual fact it is males that are a weaker sex. Is it true or not?

Pre-writing Tips
Before writing the essay on a chosen topic make sure to take care of several steps:

1. Brainstorm ideas. After choosing an essay topic start narrowing down on what specific section or element you will be focusing on. Remember that the analytical essay is not long. If everything is done correctly the reader should genuinely be curious about the information being presented.
2. Research thoroughly. After figuring out what exactly you are going to be writing about, open some encyclopedias and web articles. Use various sources of information besides the internet. Many books, research papers, and articles contain information that can not even be found on the internet. Keep your eyes open for authentic options.
3. Create a plan. Once you have sources and a general idea of what you will be writing about, organize it. First, write down all your arguments, then add evidence that you have found in your sources. It sometimes happens that one wants to include a certain example even though it does not completely fit the argument. Try to hold yourself up and use only arguments and evidence that are logical and rational. Keep in mind that any analytical essay that is not backed up by external documents – just is not credible.

How to Write An Introduction?

Introduction to every essay must be eye-catching, promising the reader that he will not waste his time reading your piece. A common students’ mistake is writing too long introductions that often do not even present the topic making the potential reader not intrigued but bored. It is the same formula as with making a brand. Write your paper in gender studies as if you have to sell the rest of the work.

The concluding sentence of the introduction is a thesis statement. The thesis statements should present a concrete idea that can be proven and argued for. Since the whole essay follows that statement, it is absolutely crucial to revise it and edit after finishing the essay. Otherwise, the presented arguments will not correlate with the thesis statement.

When thinking of the hook statement of the essay, rhetorical questions always get the job done. But you can get creative with it. Despite the sentence that you have chosen, make sure that it catches the reader’s attention. Afterward, present any necessary background information to give your audience some context on what you are going to be explaining. Then briefly present your arguments without explaining how they will prove your thesis statement.

Here is an example of an introduction from the text on the topic ‘Do gender misconceptions influence career aspirations?’:

Although in childhood we are constantly told that we could become whoever our hearts want, we still grow up understanding that men are better at something, while women are better at something else. These stereotypes often shape career aspirations and only the strongest people can survive and follow their true desire. Studies have proven that women feel suppressed and limited in choice when being exposed to negative gender stereotypes, making themselves portray men as a higher standard. In my opinion, cultural gender misconceptions cause women to show less interest in careers that are believed to be performed better by men.

Body Paragraphs

In an analytical essay, all research and analysis of information are presented in the paragraphs. This is where you take the core ideas you have formed from studying data and display it in the form of logical arguments.

First of all, each body paragraph should start off with a topic sentence. This topic sentence should be a smooth transition from the previous paragraph to the current one. While at the same time introducing the main idea of the upcoming text.

After crafting the nifty topic sentence, it is time time to put all the external work on the paper. Since you already have an idea of the main topic behind every one of your body paragraphs, it is time to go more in-depth on what your idea is proving. This is where you take a theory that you have made up found some extra evidence that makes the idea valid and presents the argument in a logical manner. Each body should have about 1 or 2 pieces of analysis as well as evidence to support their claim.

When it comes to presenting evidence for your claims, it is important to make sure that you are using credible sources. Wikipedia offers information on everything imaginable but it is unfortunately not a credible source. This is where your outsider information would present itself and test the quality of finding. Last but not least good body should be finished with a concluding sentence. This sentence summarises the specific argument presented in the paragraph as well as links the theory you have crafted with the overall thesis statement.

There have been numerous researches carried out on Gender. Here is a document with results of researches on gender inequality. Research results with actual numbers and per cents show that the problems are real and will probably attract more attention to your essay. Here you can find a rich compilation of articles on gender problems to use them as examples or just for inspiration. Do not forget to specify the author or conductor of the experiment.

Here is an example of some body paragraphs on the topic: “How gender inequality leads to the degradation of society”.
“The level of gender inequality affects the country’s prestige. It is not always that a high Human Development Index(HDI) equals a high level of gender equality. Qatar, for example, has reached a high level of human development – 0,851, however, its high gender inequality pushes it back to 113th place in the global ranking of gender inequality. To show the contrast, let us have a look at Moldova, which has an HDI of 0.663, but is on the 51st position in the rating of countries in gender inequality. Respect towards women plays a great role in society and the perception of the country by the world overall.

By rejecting and underestimating women as workers the countries’ economies lose a lot of valuable resources. Not all women are the same and the fact that they are greatly influenced by society stereotypes from the early childhood leaves numerous enterprises without first-class specialists. There are also too few women in politics. For example, the proportion of women in Post-Soviet countries does not exceed 20 percent. For comparison, in Sweden, this share is 45 percent, in Cuba – 49 percent. It looks like women are still not allowed to drive the ship.

Thus, both the discrimination and the self-selection mechanism of women influence the labor market at the same time, which prevents them from occupying the same positions in the world as men. Accepting more women for work did not eliminate the differences between men and women in employment. With an approximately close level of economic activity of men and women, a similar type of activity throughout the life cycle, women to get lower wages. Therefore, to eliminate the foundations of gender inequality it is not enough to ensure the equal participation of men and women in the work process. To change this it is necessary to change the demand on the labor market, the process and hiring and promoting staff, and to increase the importance and prestige of women on posts.”

Conclusion

The job here is not hard – summarise each of the arguments presented in the body paragraphs. Include information on whether your conclusions and findings are useful for society and what occurrence they prove. You can also include your suggestions for solving the problem. The last sentence should state the value of your entire essay in a global sense and show how your idea theoretically can impact the readers to act making them absorbed into this problem and read more about that topic. After presenting the overall concluding statement go back and proofread the entire essay. Get a peer or relative to look over it and make sure that the arguments are logical and coherent.

Summary

Gender studies is a complex discipline but at the same time, it is extremely important in today’s time. We are living in an era of technologies and still can not overcome gender inequality. It sounds ridiculous. Anyway, with this ultimate guide on writing an analytical essay in gender studies, there is nothing for you to afraid of.