I am interested in this research question because it is something that I would like to have a solid answer to since my question is a bit complicated and it has various different aspects that can be looked into. This research question affects me because I am a female, and gender discrimination is unfortunately something that I may have to experience someday when I become employed. This question affects my values because I would say that I am a women's rights advocate, so gender and sex discrimination in the workplace are naturally something that I would like to see an end to. I am interested in researching the west in particular due to the fact that this is the area that I live in and will probably work in some day. Personally, I have not yet experienced the discrimination I am researching due to the fact that I am a student and I have never worked any full-time jobs. As said previously though, it is something that I may have to face later on after I graduate and get a job. I would say that I could be qualified to write about this topic because I am fairly well educated in regards to this matter; I went to an all-girls school for eleven years where I was frequently encouraged to take leadership positions and told of the prevalence of sexism in the workplace in modern society. Also, as a female, I feel that my own personal interest in this subject led me to find a bit more about it in my spare time.


The first article I found was informational, and it focused on the gender wage gap in America and asserted that one existed. The major evidence provided in this article was primarily statistics, mainly in the form of charts. The charts provided numerical data on the difference in wage gap between men and women, women of different races, and older versus younger women. The major values of this article were clearly the fact that the gender wage gap is something that exists and is an even bigger issue for women of color and older women. The author was probably interested in informing readers about it and bringing up possible solutions that people can participate in to help end it. This article is credible in that the author is an expert in the area of women's rights. However, it is also biased; since the author is a woman, she could have experienced discrimination in the workplace based on her gender. The bias is also evident from the writer's tone in the article since she considers the wage gap in America to be a prevalent issue and some people disagree. Nonetheless, I would still say that this is a credible article that contains valuable information that I can use in my project.


The next article I found was one claiming that in the workplace, women are significantly less likely than men to take positions of authority. In this article, evidence was also gathered in the form of numerical statistics to prove the main point to be true. In this case however, several different countries were surveyed. Here, the authors clearly wanted to prove in an unbiased and scientific manner that women are indeed far less likely to take authoritative positions where they are employed. However, perhaps there is some underlying personal interest in the author since his research seems quite concerned with proving his claim to be statistically verifiable. I would say that the source is quite credible since Erik Olin, one of the authors, is one of the researchers in a group that discovered the information shown in this article. This is significant to his credibility because since he is one of the participants of a large-scale research study on this topic, he is probably an expert on it. Since it is a factual article, it is also not biased since it does not contain opinions. However, the source may not be nearly as credible as the author since it is over twenty years old and quite a bit has changed during this time. Nonetheless, the evidence presented in this article can still be applicable to modern times.


The last article I found was one that stated that women face mistreatment in the workplace in the form of sexual harassment, cruelty from customers, and discrimination from their employers. The article also discusses the outcomes of such mistreatment. This information is implemented in this article in the form of data gathered from research conducted by professionals. Women's contributions and their overall welfare were clearly valued in this article, as were the positive outcomes of them being respected in the workplace. The writers seemed quite interested in demonstrating the different levels of which women are influenced by workplace mistreatment and the impacts that it has on the place that they are employed. The credibility of this author is valid since they back up their facts with evidence gathered from researchers and consistently cite where they got certain statistics. However, they are biased since they seem to firmly believe that workplace mistreatment of women is a serious issue, and perhaps some people may argue that it is not as common or notable as the authors make it out to be. However, this article is still able to prove that the mistreatment of women in the workplace is something that is real problem faced by some women today.

Reflection:

My research question is arguable because some people assert that gender and sex discrimination in the workplace are quite real and prevalent in the west, but some may dismiss this claim or argue that at this point, it is not a very significant issue in the modern world. I have not located any disagreements among the sources I have found so far as most of them have been asserting that the discrimination of women in the workplace is indeed a problematic issue. Thus, my next step is probably to find some articles that disagree with this assertion. For me, the different perspectives of the sources I have found affect my work in that they have demonstrated to me that there is clearly much that still needs to change in the workplace to grant equality to everyone. Maybe it is because I have only looked at sources coming from a certain perspective, but so far, it seems that workplace discrimination based on sex and gender is still very much a problem faced by workers today. 

