Gender Reflection Assignment

Assignment 3 (Term Paper Assignment, 50 points):

Gender Reflection Assignment
This assignment is intensively both descriptive and analytical. It should contain two parts:

[Part 1] Examine and identify the gender stereotypes that affect your gender role formation. Discuss the process you’ve gone through (or are currently going through) for your gender identity development. Describe in what ways you perform and construct gender. What factors and issues in race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status/class, sexual orientation, age, health, immigration status, have come into play that specifically relate to your being male, female or a third gender? What particular considerations have you been faced with concerning your gender? Which sex do you think has an easier time of identity formation and why? How is your gender role influencing your career aspiration and preparation? And how is your gender role affecting your relationship with your family, friends, and significant other?

[Part 2] Select to use 2 theories and information we discussed in the course, compare and contrast these two theories in the analysis of your gender development, discussing what significance this particular new information/knowledge of gender reflection is for your future endeavor such as career and life (which may or may not include parenthood).

You may be assured that the instructor does not have a voyeuristic interest in your personal life but she believes this assignment is a meaningful way to relate the content of the course of many theories and research to the understanding of the reality of your life.

This paper should be 5 page-, double spaced, 1” margins, spell-checked, in dark ink (e.g., not in pink) Times New Roman 12-point font and in .doc or .docx file. [Title page is not required. But if you have a title page, make sure you still have 5 to 5.5 pages of the text of the paper. If you have any citation, use a separate page for the reference page, following APA style in referencing. It will be about 1,800-2,000 words for the text of the paper.] Your name, ID, term (e.g., Fall 2022), cohesive writing is required and expected with correct use of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. Please take advantage of the UTRGV Writing Center for any assistance on your term paper before submission.

The assignment should be submitted at Blackboard where SafeAssign program is applied to check the similarity/originality rate of your writing, so please be sure to write as much an original paper as you can, and avoid copy-pasting from other people’s writing, to keep the similarity rate below 25% (if it’s within 25%, the similarity mostly reflects the citation of the theories or research). Try to keep the citation or quotation to the minimum by paraphrasing rather than directly citing or quoting. The paper will not be accepted if the similarity rate is higher than 25%.

QUESTIONS WHICH MAY HELP YOU IN THINKING ABOUT AND WRITING YOUR PAPER:

1. What are the gender role beliefs that you discern in your life? If there are, can you classify in terms of hostile and/or benevolent sexism?
2. How do your current gender attitudes and beliefs compare to those of your parents and/or grandparents?
3. How do religious/spiritual/cultural values affect your values and decision-making regarding gender?
4. How will your view of feminism affect your gender role or/and your identity?
5. How do other social factors such as class/socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, ability/disability, language, and immigration status interact with gender in your experience of being a woman/man? How do you use the concept of intersectionality to view the reality of social justice or injustice through examining issues of privilege?
6. Do your gender values/attitudes and choices also reflect the culture in which you were raised?
7. What is your career plan or choice of work? Is your career plan affected by your gender role beliefs? If so in what way? Is leadership also a part of your gender role? If so in what way?
8. In your opinion, what is the importance of gender in a romantic relationship? What are your personal expectations for a love relationship?
9. What do you feel are society’s expectations of you as a male/female? How early did you start to become aware of these expectations?
10. How easy or comfortable was communication about gender within your family?
    What messages did you get about gender by observing your parents’ relationship while you were growing up?
11. What was your primary source of learning about gender while you were growing
    up?
12. If you have children, what would you like to teach them about gender? (If you do not plan to have children, what would you like to tell young people in your community about gender?)
13. Feel free to add your own questions here to reflect a particular theme.

If you do not wish to write about your own gender identity development for any reasons, alternatively you may conduct a small scaled hands-on study/research to investigate a question regarding gender in society that interests you, using APA style to write a paper of 5 pages, double-spaced, spell-checked in dark ink 12 point-font and in .doc or .docx format. Select a topic that you find it personally meaningful to investigate in the field of psychology of gender. Design the procedure (or questionnaire), collect data, and analyze the research results with at least two different theories in psychology of women (see Hyde et al, 2013) or psychology of gender (see Eagly et al, 2004).

Remember: You may need to obtain informed consent from participants or the parental consent and possible IRB (Institutional Review Board) procedures for this study.

For possible topics please see the instructor (You do need to declare your topic with the professor within 2 weeks if you decide to write an alternative topic).
IRB: http://www.utrgv.edu/en-us/research/office-of-research/index.htm