Textbooks

Education is a system in which social values and cultural attitudes are transmitted, and textbooks are an important part of this socialization process. Gender representations in textbooks have received significant scholarly attention over the past four decades, beginning after the rise of the women's movement. Since Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibited sex discrimination against students and employees in any federally funded program, issues of equality in education have received national attention. As Title IX applies to all aspects of student life, including sports, testing conditions, and school rules and policies, textbooks' stereotypical and limiting portrayals of the sexes also came under scrutiny. Publishers also began to recognize the importance of ensuring equal representation in their textbooks, and by the mid-1970s most publishers had issued guidebooks for authors, noting the potential impact that textbooks can have on students. By 1975, major textbook publisher Macmillan issued the statement (quoted by G. E. Britton and M. C. Lumpkin in a 1977 article) that “children are not simply being taught mathematics and reading; they are also learning, sometimes subliminally, how society regards certain groups of people.” McGraw-Hill Book Company also issued guidelines to help ensure equal treatment of the sexes in their publications and called for the elimination of sexism and sexist language from all McGraw-Hill publications. Their guidelines included directives such as that [Page 386]characteristics traditionally praised in males, specifically assertiveness and boldness, should also be praised in females. Yet, while textbook publishers have noted the importance of equitable representation of both males and females in their books since the passage of Title IX, analyses of these publications have continued to find unequal portrayals of the sexes.

In most studies of textbook representations prior to the 1980s such content remained highly stereotypical in its portrayals of male and female characters. According to a 1984 review of the existing literature in this area, conducted by scholars C. G. Schau and K. P. Scott, most instructional materials for students remained sexist. In their meta-analysis of the research to date, which included textbooks targeted at audiences from preschool to college age, the authors concluded that the equitable representations of the sexes had not yet been attained. Importantly, the authors noted, students' exposure to sex-equitable materials results in more flexible sex-role attitudes for both males and females, but exposure to sexist material contributed to more sex-typed attitudes, with students' attitudes directly related to amount of exposure. Based on these findings, Schau and Scott argued that in order for students to fulfill their learning potential, a flexible gender-role attitude is needed, and therefore equitable, nonstereotypical representations of males and females within educational materials are necessary.

Scholars concluded from a 2000 analysis of elementary-school textbooks and their depictions of gender traits that, despite increasing awareness of gender issues and stereotypes, male characters were still largely portrayed as competitive, aggressive, and argumentative.

(http://Photos.com)

In 1992, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) released a report that the organization had commissioned from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women that received national attention. This report synthesized the research to date on gendered performance in schools. The report found that many inequalities still existed within U.S. school systems, including sex discrimination and sex stereotyping, inadequate teacher training in issues related to gender and learning styles, and the absence of curricular materials that fairly represented females and avoided sex stereotyping. The report also found that the historical and social contributions, as well as the experiences, of girls and women were still marginalized or ignored entirely in many of the textbooks used in schools across the country. Related findings noted in the report were that girls did not emerge from public schools with the same degree of confidence and self-esteem as did boys, with a loss of self-confidence in girls twice that for boys as they shifted from childhood into their adolescent years. Classroom experiences played a crucial part in challenging and changing gender-role expectations that undermined the self-confidence and achievement of girls. In a 1998 follow-up report, the AAUW noted that teaching materials such as textbooks still needed improvement. Although many textbook authors and publishers had become more conscious of gender representations, many continued to portray female characters in stereotypical roles that reinforced gender biases. Critics, however, took issue with the AAUW findings, citing the expanded coverage of topics such as women's history and broader treatment and inclusion of gender in textbooks by the end of the 1970s. While the AAUW report criticized the lack of balanced treatment of the sexes and highlighted the rare inclusion of women's perspectives within textbooks, critics questioned the desire for a new social history and responded that it was almost exclusively men who held positions of political and economic power. Concerns were voiced about what aspects of the standard history could be left out of textbooks if space continued to be allocated to what was framed by opponents as personal issues, such [Page 387]as sexism and racism. Advocates for more inclusive and equality-based textbook coverage of gender issues argued that this would be an improvement over the elitist and patriarchal sequence of events usually taught to students.

...