This study revolves around calculating the extent of appearance of both anonymously and named men and women as well as determining whether or not Yvonne Hirdman’s gender theory is applicable on two versions of a Swedish educational history textbook called Epos: historia: för gymnasieskolans kurs A (2008) and Epos [historia] 1b (2012), published for two different curriculum. Our qualitative investigation of two parts of the book’s content proves that the two principles of gender system are present in both books, although to a lesser extent in the latter version. Calculating the material, results have shown that anonymous men and women are almost equally presented in Epos 2012, which is not the case in the 2008 version. However, studying the extent of named men and women, we can determine that male characters are overrepresented in both versions, with a total of 80 % of all persons named in the books being of the male gender. To further problematize our material, we discuss how the student’s identity, based on E.H. Erikson’s theory of identity, could be affected by the subject matter content. We believe that it can be malicious to student’s self-image, and that it is the teacher’s responsibility to debate with the students about how the gender system’s two principles are present in our society.