Gender inequality and how to solve it

Historical Conversations Project Prompt The HCP asks you to do four things: (1) define and describe a significant political/social/cultural problem; [[[[I already choose the gender inequality as the topic]]]]]](2) justify and frame this problem to convince your audience that the problem you’re addressing and the questions you’re asking are alive and relevant right now; (3) summarize and critically evaluate various conversations and debates made by credible scholars and organizations about your topic; and (4) use evidence from the past and present to show a contemporary issue in historical perspective. One of the main purposes of this first project is to expose you to various topics, arguments, histories, and background knowledge that will enable you engage with each other over the course of the quarter. The HCP will also require you to locate, evaluate, select, arrange, and integrate sources into a multi-modal composition (in other words, a written paper with at least two visual elements). As a genre of communication—and in the case of this assignment, one that frames a problem, delivers arguments, uses evidence, and speaks to a broad audience—a multi-modal composition can be a synthesis of various rhetorical positions that work together to deepen argumentative positions and claims. As you are putting this project together, remember: In capturing a “historical conversation,” you are not so much making an argument as documenting one. In the process, you will need to capture the historical context in which this ongoing argument is taking place. Requirements: MLA formatting (using Times New Roman, font size 12) Two “multimodal” elements (charts, graphs, photography, etc.) 6 sources (at least) that range in kind (academic, popular, governmental, etc.), purpose (argumentative, informative) In addition to meeting the requirements listed above, you will be graded on the following: In general, project demonstrates mastery of chosen topic (or “social problem”) through serious engagement with—and presentation of—a variety of sources Arguments that arise in the various sources are skillfully brought into dialogue with one another through the introduction of a few key concepts (e.g., class, mobility, opportunity, etc.) In order to facilitate such dialogue, your project should negotiate between similarities (“both authors are writing about ____,” for instance) and differences (“while X emphasizes ____, Y takes ____ to be the primary factor in growing inequality”). In this process, pay special attention to how different authors define or otherwise identify key concepts, social agency (who or what is responsible for social problems), and societal objectives. In general, it is helpful to look for two levels of disagreement: (1) descriptive disagreement (about what is the case) and (2) normative disagreement (about what ought to be the case). The project’s social problem is historicized—that is to say, it is captured in its historical specificity For example: instead of suggesting that social inequality is always a problem, your project should locate the problem of inequality (or a specific subtopic relating to inequality, such as school zoning laws) in historical terms. As we have seen in the material covered in class, this is generally traced back to the 1970s—shifts in the economy, for instance, that lead to shifts in social policy and forms of social stratification. The project navigates between the general and particular and finds a balance between the two levels In other words, key concepts such a mobility and opportunity (“the general” above) are linked up to specific instances or examples (“the particular”). Think of how Putnam’s book accomplishes this by framing his discussions in each chapter through particular stories and then moving to more general discussions of statistics, etc. Overall organization and coherence (the sources, information, and multi-modal elements gathered in the research process are thoughtfully presented in the final project) Sentence-level grammar proficiency The following content is partner provided