First, I tried using Boolean operators in my search. I used the keywords "women OR females", "affects OR roles", and then just export processing zones in the last line. I found many subject specific articles that I hadn’t found before. Before, most the articles I found just had a small section about women in EPZs, but the articles I found when I used Boolean operators were mainly about the women. I also tried using the truncation symbol with the word affect (affect*), so I could see results for affects, affecting, affected, etc… I got about the same results with that as I did without the truncation symbol. I like this new technique of using Boolean operators and I think I’ll use it more often in my research, especially for my topic for this class, because it gave me more subject specific information.
Secondly, I tried finding statistics and government information relating to my topic. I searched in the database Statistical Universe using the keywords “women in export processing zones.” At first I only got one result, and it didn’t seem to have much to do with EPZs, so I tried broadening my keyword to just “export processing zones.” Doing this gave me 69 results, but they were all about the workers’ conditions or their Annual Reports, not about the women. For my project the only statistic I’ll probably use is the percent of women that make up EPZs. I didn’t find it on Statistical Universe but I’m sure I can find it on another site.
