How has the role of women changed from the 1800s until today (2016-2017)?

Gender inequality is what my EPQ topic is about and I have already started on my 5000 word essay. The problem is, I have a list of renown women who have challenged the gender stereotypes such as Margaret Thatcher, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Anderson, etc and I am struggling to find a way to include them into my essay.
Basically, I am struggling to find a way to structure my essay and not making it sound like I am just stating facts and less of a discussion.

This might seem as if I am asking someone to do my EPQ but I genuinely need some guidance. (halp ;-

This could be a Ph.D. topic.

It's far to wide ranging, both in scope and time period. It really needs significantly narrowing down in order to write a tight, well-focussed essay that will achieve high marks. Think about changing the time period, or defining much more closely what roles you're talking about - domestically, employment, 'human rights', legally? As well as making the topic actually manageable, it will help you structure your thinking.

Sorry you've not had any responses about this. Are you sure you've posted in the right place? Here's a link to our subject forum which should help get you more responses if you post there.


Just quoting in Danny Dorito so she can move the thread if needed

Thank you for your input! It really saved me there, my EPQ supervisor said the same thing.
I changed my question to, "To what extent has the role of women in the world of British employment changed since the 19th century until modern day (2017)?"
Is this alright? Or should I refine it even more?

It's good that you've narrowed the focus by geography and topic, although you're still attempting to cover a 200-year time period. Perhaps that's feasible, but you may want to discuss it with your supervisor.

On a separate note, you need to carefully consider the wording of your question. For the question you have put here, you've written the question 'to what extent' when I imagine you'll actually end up answering the question 'in what ways' (I could be wrong here, though). Also the 'until modern day' is redundant and should be deleted. You will spend a long time answering this question, so spend a good amount of time thinking about how you're phrasing it.

I see. Sorry for the late reply, I've talked to my supervisor just last Thursday and she told me to try and find a way to rephrase my question, which would get a descriptive answer to a discussion one (I hope I'm making sense). I wasn't sure of how to do that, but at one point I was thinking of completely changing my question to "Discuss whether or not was Margaret Thatcher a good role model to women of the ages 20-40, whilst taking into consideration her political decisions" (something like that?)