respond to how gender inequality in China may impact unemployment and local economic development.
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STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT>: |
This dissertation suffers from a number of issues:
• It does not identify a clear, focussed and appropriately complex overarching research question that is do-able within a 10,000 word dissertation. For example, the reader has no idea what specific aspect of gendered socio- economic life the research will interrogate in order to respond to how gender inequality in China may impact unemployment and local economic development. • There is no identification of a concrete research gap, only that we don’t know enough about gender inequality and its relation to economic development in China. • There is no theoretical underpinning to the research. The literature review simply tells us that there is a gender equality issue in China. The work therefore lacks an analytical lens and framework that would have lent the dissertation and research some structure. • The methods used are inadequate and unfocussed. 6 interviews with women in random organisations does not make a decent sample; and we have no idea of the respondents’ positionalities; how long the interviews lasted; were they transcribed word for word; and why were the interviews unstructured? • There is no identification of a representative case-study that could be used to interrogate a specific element of gender inequality and its impacts on local economic development potential. • The results are unclear and mixed together with other literatures that just seem to repeat what was said in the literature review. • The referencing is incorrectly done throughout. • There is no clear argument • The policy recommendations and conclusions arise more from existing literatures than from your own research.
Overall, this is not up to the standard that would be expected for an LED dissertation. To advise going forward, you need to narrow this all down into an interesting piece of research. For instance, you could have chosen one specific sector (e.g. the car manufacturing sector), with one clearly identified gap in the research (e.g. how gender inequalities in the workplace affect the capacities of women to take part in |
| processes of knowledge transfer and diffusion (both during and after work), with the aim of interrogating one important aspect of LED (e.g. women’s ability to contribute to innovation within the firm). You would then have chosen a relevant case study (e.g. the car manufacturing cluster in Wuhan) and undertaken an appropriately sized set of interviews in a ‘purposive sample’ (e.g. 20 interviews with women in different parts of the firm that might be important to innovation). Semi-structured interviews based around 3-4 core themes would have given you more structure to your analysis. Please take a good look at the resources available on the GY486 Moodle page. |
