When it comes to writing a solid essay, your target audience can play a key role. Target audiences can determine how complex or simple the paper is. Knowing who your target audience is can help writers to make decisions about what information they should include, how they should arrange that information, and what kind of supporting details will be necessary for the reader to understand what they are presenting.

In my last two essays, I discussed the topics of gender inequality and how it affects girls at a young age and women’s mental health but specifically the mental health of women who have the responsibilities of having a job and raising a family. The target audience for both of these papers was women between the ages of 13-25 mainly because they are the new generation, the generation that can cause a change to happen. I wanted my audience to be moved by my paper. I wanted them to be motivated to go out and break the constant chain that occurs when it comes to gender inequality. Because of this, I believed that visual aids like photographs and art pieces would help make my ideas more attractive to my audience. I think different artworks can really allow my audience to have a stronger reaction emotionally rather than my long, excessive paper. I also believe that poetry would also be a great aid for my thoughts. The rhetorical strategy that I think would work in my favor would be pathos mainly because I want my audience to have a strong emotional connection to my paper.

For my second essay, I decided to stick with the topic of gender inequality but mainly, women and the workplace. In my first essay, I spoke about how many women have a hard time balancing their work-life and their personal life and because of this, many women have suffered career-wise and mentally. One in five women in the United States experienced a mental health condition in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office and many women can experience mental illness differently than their male coworkers. Many workplaces have dismissed mental illness as a sign of weakness in someone whom they believe should not be working. Because of this, many women end up leaving their jobs and careers behind.

This topic interested me mainly because I believe that mental health is very important, especially for women. Any different life events and hormonal changes can affect a women’s mental health drastically. Around one in five women has a common mental health problem such as anxiety, depression, or self-harm. Because of society’s views on women, many women internalize their feelings. Personally, I do not think this is a good thing. Internalizing feelings can lead to many more mental health issues and women, by virtue of being half of our population. To add to this, having a healthy workforce that shows up to work in a good frame of mind, ready to work benefits everyone and without acknowledging mental health in the workplace can lead to a negative impact on productivity and profits, as well as an increase in costs to deal with the issue.

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/w/women-and-mental-health

A social issue that both sparks my interest and involves me is gender inequality. This social issue interests me the most mainly because I am also affected by this and probably my future daughter too. Gender inequality is something that has been going on for generations and needs to be stopped. The textbook definition of gender inequality is “social process by which men and women are not treated equally. The treatment may arise from distinctions regarding biology, psychology, or cultural norms prevalent in the society.”

Gender inequality is something that has affected many females from a young age. According to a study, many girls receive less support than boys to pursue the studies they choose and “Discriminatory teaching practices and education materials also produce gender gaps in learning and skills development. As a result, nearly 1 in 4 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are neither employed nor in education or training – compared to 1 in 10 boys.” Whether it was during school when teachers would purposefully say “I need some strong boys to help me” or at the workplace where we are paid less then our male coworkers, women experience inequality regularly. What makes this matter even worse is the fact that gender inequality occurs all over the world. According to another case study, “All over the world men tend to earn more than women. Women are often underrepresented in senior positions within firms. Women are often over-represented in low-paying jobs. In many countries men are more likely to own land and control productive assets than women.”

In the photo below, we can see a few Amish women protesting against Texas’ new law on abortion. Taken by Getty Images on the 24th of July 2021, the sign that one of the women is holding is a drawing of the state of Texas as a bloody coat hanger to represent the coat hanger abortion myth. In this myth, many people believe that women use coat hangers to pull out the fetus and abort it. Though this myth has been proven false, many people still believe it.

The author is mainly responding to the fact that Texas just changed the lives of all women living in Texas, no matter their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. The purpose of this image is to bring to light the situation that is occurring in Texas. Because of this new law, every single woman in Texas is suffering and is having part of their freedom ripped from them. Personally, I believe that the main target audience of this post can be the politicians and officials that voted on this new law and the rest of America. These two groups are the main audience because this photo is showing how every single female in Texas is suffering from this bill.Texans politicians are also the main target because they are the reason the law is in effect. The author’s stance on this issue is very clear; they are against the law like most of America. This issue is not just a problem in Texas; eight other states have made abortions illegal. With keeping this in mind, the genre of this image would be a public statement since the artist is trying to inform the general public about this issue.

My name is Sierra Bell (she/her) and my intended major is Psychology.

   After reading and reviewing the syllabus, one thing that I am excited about is improving and expanding my writing skills. Along with being excited to start college, I am also anxious about transitioning from high school to college. With this in mind, another thing that I am anxious about is transitioning from high school English classes to college English classes. From my experience, high school English classes mainly cover literature and language with just the basics of writing while college English classes are mainly focused on writing. 

   When it comes to writing, everyone has different ideas of what good writing qualities are. Personally, I think one good quality of writing is development. Writing should always have some type of structure and unity to it. In order to do this, writers need to have an idea of how they are going to build and write their work. Writing is also important because it is a basic life skill. If we did not know how to write, then there would be no books and articles and without books, we would not be able to learn and comprehend things.

   Personally, I do not think I am a good writer. But if there was one thing about writing that I find the easiest is it would be how I express myself. Whenever I write my papers or essays, I always try to express my opinion as best as possible or if it is a research paper, I try to express the research as much as I can. I think the hardest part of writing for me would be introductions. Introductions are what draw the readers into your work and I sometimes struggle to start my writings. 

    As a Psychology major who is planning on becoming an actual Psychologist I will be expected write many papers, specifically research papers. I will also be writing many patient evaluation forms. I will also be dealing with the brain and will be conducting many different research projects. Being an effective writer can affect me because if I cannot construct researches and conduct different experiments, people will not trust me to study them.