The purpose of this study is to find out whether and to what extent there has been a change in how boys/men and girls/women are represented in textbooks which are used for teaching English in the third grade of primary school. The study compares six textbooks published between the years 2002 and 2017 to investigate the purpose of this study. The theoretical framework of the study is Hirdman’s (1988) two gender principles (separation and hierarchy) and terms such as equality, male and female. The study uses a quantitative research method to analyze texts and images in the textbooks. To fulfill the purpose of this study, the following questions are investigated: - Are girls/women and boys/men represented to the same extent in the texts and images in the textbooks used for teaching English in the third grade? Has this changed over time? - What characteristics are associated with girls/women and boys/men in the texts and images in the textbooks used for teaching English in the third grade? Has this changed over time? The results of the study show that men are represented more often in text and images overall, especially in the books that are published in 2017. However, in one of the books, which was published in 2003, men and women are represented equally frequently (50% men and 50% women) in the images. For the categories active and passive, men are more often portrayed as active and women are more often as passive both in the text and in the images. However, in the books from 2002 and 2003, men and women are portrayed as active almost equally often in the text and the images. Furthermore, while the frequencies are relatively low, the results show that men are often portrayed as being strong. Nevertheless, in three of the six analyzed books, the same number of men and women are portrayed as being strong. For the category beautiful, only men are portrayed as beautiful and no woman is portrayed as beautiful in the six analyzed books. The last category that is analyzed is sport. The results show that the number of men shown to be doing some sport activity is higher than for women. One general conclusion that can be drawn regarding whether the representation of men and women has changed over time is that the most recent books show gender inequality when subjected to closer scrutiny.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-33980 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Djeordjic, Tijana |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds