This was, as our instructor called it, the "first step," which included researching and writing annotated bibliography, as well as writing a prospectus. I excelled in finding evidence of existence of sexism, especially globally and its presence in media and video games. I also found proves that it has been awhile for a long time, and can be traced back for a while. 

However, what I did not do was talk about what sexism IS and WHY is it a problem. As our instructor phrased it, "I still don't get the sense that you understand why sexism is bad...  I want you to imagine you are explaining it to someone who doesn't believe it exists anymore." Thinking about someone introducing an opinion completely new to me or that I totally disagreed with, I started to see how I should structure my essay. It would take a clear explanation of all the important parts the problem compose of, explained in a clear and concise way, and reasoning why it is a problem that needs to be fixed. 

Prospectus:

Sexism, which can be loosely defined as prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination on the basis of sex, has existed for a long time, and has changed a lot. Many will argue that sexism has rapidly decreased and women have equal right as men in modern society. However, we have to admit that sexism still exists in modern society, and trace back to when it began and how has it changed since then. In “Nonsexist Language in Social-Work Journals - Not a Trivial Pursuit”, by Else and M. J., the article provided a brief history of shift in women’s right. It also studied the social work journals and their policies on nonsexist language. Since this article date back to 1987, it is closer to when sexism was still a major concern. It also shows that sexism was a problem. The Sexism’s past is important because, similar to racism, it is one of those movements that has to go through a phase of fighting for equality and was the cause of many laws, acts, and legal activity. Sexism also leads to unwanted effect on society, such as gender inequality. In “Sexism and Gender Inequality across 57 Societies”, by Brandt, it studies how sexism is correlated with gender inequality in most society. Sexism also comes in different forms, with the two most well-known ones as hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Glick and Fiske study this in their article “The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory.” However, these studies just address society as a whole. However, if we look into a more modern case of sexism, we can find such case in media. Fox, Carlos, and Lee study the effect of sexist hashtags in social media in their article “Perpetuating Online Sexism Offline.” Video games, a big part of media in the modern time, also went through a phase of being complained to have trace of sexism, such as having male character stereotyped as masculine and female character stereotyped as sex object. Dill, Brown, and Collins studies the effect that this has in their research “Effects of Exposure to Sex-Stereotyped Video Game Characters on Tolerance of Sexual Harassment.” In “Sexism in Online Video Games: The Role of Conformity to Masculine Norms and Social Dominance Orientation”, by Fox and Tang, they studied gaming community and the dominance of men over women. They also discuss the gaming environment for females.