This study aims to examine how language in textbooks used in Swedish upper secondary school represent and construct gender. Three different textbooks used for the course Swedish 1 have been analyzed at a lexical level, where gender theory and critical discourse analysis constitutes the basis for the method. By comparing how often and in what context men and women are mentioned as well as evaluating which adjectives and participles are used to describe men and women, the study shows how gender is created and how it appears in the textbooks. The result shows that the traditional gender roles are reproduced as well as challenged in the textbooks. Overall men are overrepresented in all of the textbooks. Men are also more often associated with success and public discourses, while women more often appear in relation to home and family or to fill the role of a partner. The description of men and women shows that men and women are described with both positive and negative characteristics. The biggest difference between the genders appear in the description of clothes and looks, where the aesthetic looks of the females are more focused upon than that of their male counterparts. Another difference is that men more often are described as angry and violent than women.