An analysis of more than 1,200 English textbooks from 34 countries has revealed a persistent pattern of gender bias. This is manifested in the representation of masculine and feminine roles, as well as in the underrepresentation of female characters. Furthermore, words associated with men appear twice as often compared to those referring to women.
These are the main conclusions of a study carried out by researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom, published this Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.
School textbooks play a crucial role in forming norms and attitudes among students
Therefore, the content of these texts It has generated so much controversy in many countries today. In this research, Lee Crawfurd, from the Center for Global Development (UK), and his team, analyzed how gender norms are reflected in the textbooks globally.
The researchers used an extensive corpus of textbooks to carry out your analysis: a total of 1,255 school books in Englishpublicly available online, covering various subjects for students ages 4 to 13 in 34 countries. These books were downloaded between 2020 and 2022.
The comparative analysis of gender language in texts
For your study, They compared the content of the texts with predefined lists of nouns and pronouns associated with the gender.
(such as “aunt,” “she,” or “woman”) and analyzed how often these words were related to key terms that have been used in previous research on topics such as achievements, appearance, family, home and work (e.g., “powerful,” “beautiful,” “home,” or “executive”).
Finally, the authors contrasted the results of their textual analysis with gender equality indicators at the national level.
Gender inequality
It was found that, in the full sample of textbookson average there were more than twice as many mentions of masculine terms (178,142) compared to females (82,113), although results varied considerably between countries.
After adjusting for the length of the book, the educational level and subject matter, the countries with the lowest representation of women and girls were Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Sudan, where less than a third of gendered words were feminine.
In all countries, The adjectives most frequently associated solely with female characters included ‘married’, ‘beautiful’, ‘old’ and ‘quiet’.while the most common verbs for these characters were ‘bake’, ‘cook’ and ‘sing’.
Male characters associated with power and success, while women are portrayed in traditional roles
On the other hand, the adjectives most likely to describe male characters were ‘powerful’, ‘rich’, ‘wise’ and ‘confident’, and the verbs most associated with them included ‘rule’, ‘guide’, ‘point’ and ‘order’.
Most words related to achievement and work topics were more associated with masculine terms, while words linked to appearance and home had a greater relationship with feminine terms.
The authors highlight that countries whose textbooks included a greater number of female characters tended to have a higher GDP and more legal rights for womenalthough they emphasize that this relationship is only correlational and does not imply causality.
In addition, they clarify that the analysis was limited to books in English, so the results may not be applicable to other languages. However, they suggest that addressing gender biases in textbooks could have tangible effects in reality.
“Our findings reflect that school books continue to reinforce outdated gender stereotypes. Schools should expand children’s horizons, not limit their potential. It is crucial that educational policy makers address these disparities,” they conclude.
