Masters degree Essay Question: Are Women in development (WID) and Gender-and-development (GAD) positive or negative for women in the global south? Important Instructions and notes by the professor: One of the main ways in which students can gain high marks is to have carried out thorough research into the contexts (the relevant socio-economic, political, cultural aspects of the place) and also into the issues concerned. This should be sufficient for you to be able to provide specifics and not simply to give generalisations. Essays that fail to do this are likely to be marked relatively low. Essays will be judged on the logic of the argument and their overall construction as much as on the contents. They will also be judged on their level of scholarship and on their use of scholarly literature including what we studied in class but also additional sources. You are encouraged to read all sources critically, and you will not lose marks if you critique ideas from the module, provided you do so in a scholarly manner but you will lose marks if you do not engage with the relevant ideas from the module. This includes engaging in your writing with the way concepts such as masculinism, gender norms, etc. were discussed in class. You don’t have to adopt the ones used in class but you will lose marks if you don’t even acknowledge them. However, keep your definitions brief and specific to the elements you will use in the essay so you devote the majority of the paper to your argument. Explicit presentation of your argument is required in the introductory section; it must be followed up throughout the essay and be returned to in the conclusion where you must also explicitly answer the exact essay question asked. You will lose marks if you do not do this. In the introduction you should briefly explain the context of your case study/ies. At the end of your introduction you should also lay out the trajectory of your essay. Remember to substantiate each point with both evidence and references and take care to build bridges between each of these points that will allow you to link them logically to your next point. Do not leave statements and quotations just sitting there. Only include them if you’re going to comment on them in such a way as to show their relevance to your argument. It is preferable not to use quotations unless the specific wording is crucial to your argument. All this should contribute to building up an argument throughout the entire essay point by point. Bibliographies should be properly and consistently formatted following styles used in published journal articles and organised in alphabetical order on family name. The formatting of the core readings in this outline can be used as a template. First names are also preferred to initials since in gender studies it is important to know the sex of the author, simply so as to increase transparency. Do not number your references. Also please note the date on your reference and only draw information that’s relevant from that. This means that you cannot use a reference from many years ago to provide statistics relevant to today but you can use it to make a theoretical point. Do not attempt to discuss every aspect of the issue addressed in the question but either tackle it in the abstract or take one element of it and focus on that and make this clear from the start in your introduction. You must use the essay question as your essay title and write specifically to that question, not a general essay on the topic. the essay should start out from the conceptual ideas of the essay question and then justify in the introduction the choice of case study but the framework of the essay should not be the case study but the conceptualisation of the essay question itself. Unless otherwise asked in the essay question you may use more than one case study from more than one context but do avoid simply jumping from example to example and place to place. Unless the essay question demands it don’t start with a history of the topic but with a conceptualisation that will allow you to answer the essay question. Do use headings to guide both you and the reader through the essay but don’t use terms such as main section or discussion. Use desсrіptive headings that tell the reader what each section contains. And avoid the use of words such as ‘always’, ‘throughout history’, ‘the likes of’ etc. – thus, be precise and use generalisations sparingly and mainly as introductions to topics. Keep your paragraphs short – one idea per paragraph is the rule in English. It’s very difficult to read long paragraphs that move from idea to idea to idea so don’t write in that style.
