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Oprah

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Sociology 435
Final Paper Assignment

You will write a scholarly paper on gender and leadership by focusing on a specific leader or by comparing 2 or more leaders. The leaders may be from any historical era or from any culture. The main focus of your inquiry into this leader is the impact of gender or a gender issue on his/her leadership. At first you may think that your only option is to write a paper on a famous woman leader such a Margaret Thatcher. This would work, of course, as there are many articles and books written about her and you could discuss her work-family balance, or her gender socialization in childhood in your paper. However, a there are many other possible choices such as Malala Yousafza, Christine Jorgensen or Lynn Conway. You could also compare the experiences of more than one leader. For example, a paper on the American presidents who grew up with single mothers, or comparing three emerging teen leaders in Asia would be interesting topics.

Try your best to stay away from movie stars, singers, or other pop starts unless they became politically active or took on leadership roles that went beyond entertainment. It is too difficult to sift through tabloid articles and the final papers will suffer because of this.

Please include the following sections in your paper:

Introduction of the leader
Here you will introduce your topic and explain why your think it is important. You need to convince any reader of your paper that it is worth his/her time to read your paper. It always helps to have a statement such as, “ This paper will cover….” in this section.

How and what did this person lead?
Discuss books and articles about your leader. This is an important section because you are providing evidence that other writers have taken interest in this person. Readers of you paper want some background on your leader because not

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