Gender Culture

Gender in cultural studies is something which could make for a great dissertation subject. If you are interested in the roles of different genders and how they are represented in cultures, this topic could be for you!

Example gender culture dissertation topic 1:

New frontiers: Expatriate women engineers in the oil industry working in the Middle East.

Although the numbers of female engineers working in the oil industry are slowly increasing in environments such as Britain and the US, expatriate women engineers are still a rarity on site in Muslim countries such as United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar. This dissertation examines the challenges that face gender equality in this arena, particularly given that the rates of female engineering students enrolled in universities in these countries are 44%, 49%, and 42% respectively. This is an under-researched area, as primarily it is the role of female expatriate managers that draws academic attention. Accordingly, the thesis draws on a significant amount of primary research, with surveys of male and female expatriate engineers, and focussed interviews with the contract managers for international engineering companies such as McDermott and Shell.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Lau, R., Lau, L., Lau, L. and Eide, C. (2010). Who gets to be boss?… Addressing demographic pressures within the petroleum industry. SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, 18-20 October 2010, Brisbane.
• O’Shaughnessy, S. and Krogman, N.T. (2011). ‘Gender as contradiction: From dichotomies to diversity in natural resource extraction’, Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 27(2), pp. 134-143.
• Seznek, J-F. and Kirk, M. (eds) (2011). Industrialization in the Gulf: A socio-economic revolution. Abingdon: Routledge.