The strength of my thesis:

I am planning on writing an essay on gender roles and power and here is my thesis. I have plenty of evidence for a gender topic right now, but do you have any suggestions on wording for this thesis?

Homer emphasizes the constant male conquest for power and time through battle to dehumanize and diminish the power of women in the Iliad.

Still having trouble with my thesis

I want to about gender and power but I'm having trouble coming up with a good thesis statement.
The one from my draft is "In the Iliad Homer shows that man an women do not follow typical gender roles in order to examine the distribution of power between the sexes." But that feels a little clunky, and possibly too simple. I don't want to end up saying the same thing over an over again. Any thoughts on how I could improve this?

Too broad? Other issues?

Here is my working thesis: 

 Homer’s Iliad illustrates women’s innate ability to endure through perilous times.  Undaunted by the onslaught of death and removed from the intimate rage of war, females find a resilience akin to immortality where their men find death.  This is exemplified in the contrast in images used to describe men and women, as well as the power women show in their speech and reasoning.

At this point, I'm attempting to prove it with examples of imagery and character description, then examples of power via emotional speeches (Briseis, Cassandra) and finally of women taking control of their situation (Helen and Andromache).    
My question(s):
a) Is this to broad a range of supporting evidence?
b) Is it acceptable/appropriate to devote an entire paragraph to the analysis of male imagery in order to have something to contrast with female descriptors when my thesis is primarily proving the role of women?

Thesis?

Here is my rough thesis.

-The mark of a strong leader is the ability to recover from personal mistakes, as can be seen by the actions of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Zeus.

Should I include more than just these 3 subjects? Otherwise I was just planning on using different textual evidence from each of them for the entire paper. Good idea? Bad? I don't know.

Your scrutiny is welcome. Thank you!

Thesis

Thesis main part -Effective leaders act to accomplish tasks. Leaders who are out doing things are the ones that people follow is pretty much what I want to say but I am having difficulties saying it.

Check it out for me,Thesis

In the Iliad These three characters show that individualism and a lust for teme gives a person the ablility to lead becuase it gives other someone to follow.
  It's not the most solid thing in the world but yeah.
Basicly what i got is that through individualism and the lust for teme it gives people something to follow becuase to step up and say well this is what a we are fighting for and what not.

Thesis refinement and evidence

My thesis is something like this:

"A community's best interest is handicapped by the powerful individuals who...."

I'm also having some trouble finding relevant evidence. Here is some of my evidence so far:

• Agamemnon refusing to give up Chryseis, resulting in a 10-day plague on his army (roughly pages 79-82)
• Paris' failure to defeat Menelaus (pages 130-140)
• Achilles refusal to eat with his troops, distancing himself from them. (pages 499-500)
• Achilles not helping the Greeks because of argument with Agamemnon (speech on 261-266)

I was also wondering if it would be good to talk about what makes a community strong, like when the Argives are separated into different tribes, and the rituals they have (like feasting). Though I'm not surehow well this helps prove what I'm trying to say.

Clarifying my Thesis

Thesis- "The glory of war is valued more than the catalyst of conflict."

I'm basically trying to say that the grit, violence and time in battle is glorified and considered very important, while the cause of the conflict (Helen) is basically put on the back burner for the entire epic.

Should I just focus on the fact that violence of war is glorified and forget about the reasons of conflict?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

thesis switch!

So I think I am going to totally change my thesis, which although I realize isn't the best idea, it's something we have all done. I'm thinking of something along the lines of "women are prized beacause of their strength and resilience, and are therefore valued members of society" but that is very rough.
I have two questions. One, is this too close to the gender issues that we were told not to talk about? And two, I was thinking about mentioning in my thesis something about how this is specific to Greek society. Is that a good or bad idea?

"Greater Good"

My current thesis is "An effective leader acts towards the greater good of the community".

"Greater good" is, obviously, very extremely vague and needs to be fixed.