User:Kksop/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gender studies

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

Having taken a few gender studies courses during my undergraduate studies, I was curious to learn more about this topic. Gender studies was explained to me in a much broader aspect whereas I had learned it through the lens of several particular theories.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section does a good job on summarizing how gender studies came to be but I found the first sentence to be a little wordy. I would also like a better understanding of what gendered representation and gender identity mean as the article does not clarify or have these terms linked to other Wikipedia pages for those who have limited knowledge on these broad terms. I feel that the article does make mention of the influences on gender studies but fails to introduce all the other sections together like the history of gender studies and the criticisms towards gender studies.

Content

There is a lot of content that is mentioned throughout the article that tries to remain as up-to-date as possible, but of course there could be more clarification about certain key concepts that are briefly brought up like gender identity or gendered representation. Additionally, only a few countries government entities are listed in their attitudes towards gender studies indicating there is a gap in the understanding of the global worldview towards gender studies.

Tone and Balance

Tone remains objective throughout the piece. Piece does place more emphasis on Western ideals, which may be due to lack of information about gender studies in other countries as noted in the government attitude section and the "Gender in Asia and Polynesia," both containing a limited number of other countries.

Sources and References

The reliability of a particular claim was one statement regarding the criticisms of queer studies, in particular, by the Catholic Church. The Judith Butler section also has also been flagged for using mostly primary sources and requires more secondary sources to bolster its reliability. There are a good portion of current sources used as well as some older sources as this topic does require some historical context drawn from older text.

Organization and Writing Quality

I believe the content is relevant to the topic, however, as the subheadings don't seem to come together as intuitively as possible, it does make me have to reread the subheadings back to see the connection. For example, when mentioning development of gender studies, Judith Butler was mentioned as the last topic as a single individual who created the theory that gender is a fully social construction. I felt that there was a lack of a time component or timeline in general moving from women's studies into Judith Butler's theory that makes the "development of gender studies" section feel disorganized.

Additionally, there was a section I felt a little lost about the placement of. There was mention of how in 2015 the first master's degree for gender studies was offered in Afghanistan but was shortly removed due to the Taliban takeover of the university. I felt that it was awkwardly placed after primarily mentioning much of the history of gender studies in the United States.

Image and Media

Being an abstract topic, I still wish there was more than one picture used within the article. The single picture regarding the "Picketing against 'gender ideology' in Warsaw, 2014" is the only copyright free photo used.

Talk Page Discussion

There has been lots of talk just about the subject matter in general such as whether gender studies can be considered separate from women's studies that made for an engaging read and a certainly interesting point to consider when trying to write from an objective stance.

Overall Impressions

This was an absolutely interesting topic that I feel starts off giving a good general overview, but could highlight what the following sections are before diving into the topic matter as there isn't a particular flow between each subheading. I feel that this article has come a long way as in reading the talk page discussion seen how article has gone from talking about the importance of gender studies to going into the topic as objectively as possible without bias present.