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How Gender Stereotypes and Topics evolved overtime in Coursebooks
20
2010s
-
2020s
1980s
1970s
How gender stereotypes and topics
have evolved overtime in coursebooks.
What has changed?
Methods have changed overtime and coursebooks have done as well. Here, we present you how gender stereotypes and topics have evolved since the 1950s.
Before we set off
"Some editorials have not presented images and texts with women in leadership roles yet (...) but they still appear linked to service areas, while images with professional or academic women are scarce."
GENRE STEREOTYPES
Graciela Morgade (2012)
TOPICS
In a world that is more and more globalized day by day, it is essential to analyse the resources and tools we provide our students when learning an L2.
We must remember that ESL is not only about learning a language but is also about developing communicative competence and intercultural awareness.
1950 & 1960s
From these decades we analysed the following books, which were made following the behaviouristic paradigm used at the time.
1950s
-
1960s
TOPICS
The main purpose of textbooks in those decades was merely to make students imitate and be able to produce a British accent at the end of the stipulated course.
Topics
Gender Presentation
These books demonstrate and illustrate what the roles in what is now called a “traditional family” were. In the society of the time they were written on, the belief that women were meant to only stay at home, working hard for their husbands and their children.
Gender Presentation
Physical Appearance
The following ideals of what a person should look like are presented in the book: a boy should be tall and slim to be good-looking; girls on the other hand should be thin and dress with decency.
Physical Appearance
CONTEXT
Textbooks from this era present grammatical structures that are to be taught without contextualizing them in any meaningful way.
Context
1970
For these years we analysed "Starting Out" from 1974.
This book is based on reading comprehension mostly. In terms of gender stereotypes, here are some observations we made.
Gender perspective
The role of women uses to be devoted to their home, while men aren't pictured doing activities at home.
Gender perspective
Beauty stereotypes
This coursebook contains pictures and phrases that emphasize beauty stereotypes and discrimination.
Beauty stereotypes
1980s
For these years we analysed "Meridian Student’s Book I" from 1985
While this book includes examples in which women's depiction has improved from older books, there are stereotypes that are still present.
Position of power
Many of the exchanges between women and men at work show men in a higher position than women.
Position of power
Activities
There are more women than men illustrated in activities at home.
Activities
Women taking
Most of the meetings between women happen in stereotypical contexts for women.
Women talking
Inequity
The distribution of women and men isn’t equal.
Inequity
1990s - 2000s
We analysed two coursebooks for this period of time; "Street Wise" from 1994 and "Skill Full" from 1999.
The lessons in the first book are divided into warm up, reading or listening comprehension and activities, while in the second book the units are divided in language contents and skills and provide a more communicative approach.
1990s
-
2000s
Topics
The variation of topics in "Street Wise" go from society issues to health, to teenagers' lifestyle.
Topics
The book "Skill Full" emphasises the nuclear type of family and introduces students to different ways of learning and studying.
Gender Stereotypes
In "Street Wise" you can find activities that focus on the changes of roles between women and men at home.
Gender Stereotypes
In "Skill Full" women are associated with love stories, and getting married as the necessary goal for happiness.
STOP OFF
From 2006 to 2012, four laws involving education were enacted in Argentina, changing the education paradigm previously known.
1) la Ley de Educación Sexual Integral 26.150(2006)
2) la Ley de Protección Integral a las Mujeres 26.485(2009)
3) la Ley de Matrimonio Igualitario 26.618(2010)
4) La Ley de Identidad de Género 26.743(2012)
Aim: promote and guarantee gender equality.
Categories
The Best Days series from 2011 was taken for this analysis, made up of three books: Best Days 1, 2 and 3. Also, Language to Go, published in 2003 by Longman was analysed. The categories that were analyzed were:
-Character’s occupations.
-Fun and free time.
-Technology.
-Family.
Boooks
Character's occupations
Character's
occupations
Fun and free time
Fun and
free time
Technology
Technology
Family
Family
2010s & 2020s
Points
in favour
Gender
inclusion and roles
Beehive 6
(2023)
English Plus 3
(2016)
Gender equity
Women and Men are present yet there's not much cultural diversity.
There are several mentions of women in history, in different fields such as science, arts, and sports but they are vaguely developed.
Roles and activities at home are shown as everyone's responsibility.
English Plus
Beehive
Topics
There's a wider range of topics included in this book. However, there're many which were left out.
There has been much improvement since the 1950s, yet there are many compulsory topics and areas that should be covered.
For instance:
ESI, LGBT inclusion, among others.
"Las decisiones que toman las editoriales a la hora de incluir determinada imagen, la elección de incluir más texto que
imagen o escoger ciertas imágenes, no son azarosas, sino que son deliberadas, se piensan y se seleccionan previamente."
Important to remember
Cieri (2020) retomando a Barthes y diversos investigadores..
Before leaving
As you were able to see, textbooks and their designs have evolved and changed a lot in the previous decades, both in the views held by the people who designed them and the paradigms through which those same people viewed learning and teaching.
Obviously, the presentation of gender and their roles in society has changed, but sadly there is work to be done to say that the presentation of people in general is uniform.
The fact is, no matter how the textbooks we use with our students are designed, we, as teachers, must be aware that we’ll have to adapt and change certain parts of them time and time again.