Muslim Women in the 21^st Century

My research process thus far has been gleaning as much information as possible. Because I’m not well educated in the topic of Muslim women in the 21^st Century, I started researching before I even began to develop questions. After a bit of simple research, I realized I had formed so many questions, I didn’t know where to start.

A few questions I decided to allow guide my research were; how has our view (as westerners) of the Muslim world changed? How has this affected Muslim women? In what ways have Muslim women conformed to society and how has the modern world shaped their lives? I noticed as I began a more thorough search, I found valuable information that completely changed my questions and purpose for researching. My thoughts and ideas have changed several times. I’m hoping this will help and not hurt my research process.

I’ve really enjoyed researching my topic. I find it difficult to find exactly what I’m looking for but in the process, I discover so many more points that could be beneficial to my issue paper. Although this could potentially be a problem with finding too much information that isn’t focused enough, I’ve gained a lot of background knowledge. Now I’m focusing on making that information applicable to my questions.

I think I’ve been doing well at keeping my research organized. I’ve been copying and pasting my findings onto a word document, along with the url and the article title, author and publishing date. I paste the most relevant statements, highlighting the points I hope to use as I start the writing process. This has made it easier to go back and look at the same article quickly, as well as keep my research focused as I can easily see what I’ve found and what more I need to search for.

In the future, I’ll definitely try to research with a specific question and try to scan the text more instead of reading the article word for word. This will save me time and help me focus on a specific question. I think I would benefit from creating an outline of where I want my ideas to go and what I hope to accomplish by writing. I have a hard time staying focused on a specific topic when there is so much to say on the matter. Well-guided questions will help me achieve this.