UNESCO.org Global Education Monitoring Report

2020 Gender Report DOWNLOAD PDF

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called on countries to develop curricula, textbooks and teaching aids free of gender-based stereotypes for all levels of education, including teacher training

Textbooks can perpetuate stereotypes by associating certain characteristics with particular groups. Inappropriate images and descriptions can make students from non-dominant backgrounds feel misrepresented, misunderstood, frustrated and alienated.

Textbooks are powerful factors in construction of gender identities. They transmit knowledge and present social and gender norms, shaping the world view of children and young people. Gender norms and values not only shape attitudes and practices but also influence aspirations and dictate expected behaviours and attributes for males and females (Heslop, 2016). In some contexts, textbooks are the first – and sometimes only – books a young person reads, and so can have a lasting impact on their perceptions. That means that, through textbooks, discriminatory norms and values can be challenged. Strategic objective B.4 of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action called on countries to develop curricula, textbooks and teaching aids free of gender-based stereotypes for all levels of education, including teacher training, in cooperation with all concerned – publishers, teachers, public authorities and parents’ associations.

WOMEN ARE UNDER-REPRESENTED IN TEXTBOOKS

In many countries, girls and women are under-represented in textbooks, and when they are included, they are depicted in traditional roles. In Afghanistan, women were almost completely absent from grade 1 textbooks published in the 1990s. Since 2001, they have been represented more frequently, but usually in passive and domestic roles, shown as mothers, caregivers, daughters and sisters. They are mostly represented as dependent, with teaching being the only career open to them (Sarvarzade and Wotipka, 2017). A review of 95 primary and secondary compulsory education textbooks in the Islamic Republic of Iran showed that women accounted for 37% of images. About half the images showing women were related to family and education, while work environments appeared in less than 7%. There were no images of women in about 60% of Farsi and foreign language textbooks, 63% of science textbooks and 74% of social science textbooks (Paivandi, 2008).