Early childhood schoolbooks designed to teach children to read, have been shown not only to shape gendered identities in a limiting, binary format, but to lend the written word the appearance of unquestionable, and restrictive truth about the way the world is. Texts written for adults, too, may similarly limit what can be known, reining in the…

This cross-national European comparison examined gender representation and stereotypes in mathematics and language textbooks from Germany, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Romania. The results showed that female characters were numerically underrepresented. Female characters were also less often a main character or individually portrayed…

The aim of the study was to analyze the narratives of the Solidarity movement in upper-secondary level history textbooks, published between 1991 and 2018. Quantitative methods were used to measure different categories of historical figures in terms of their frequency and textual space, as well as any changes in representation over time. To explore…

Background: Undergirding the dominant research focus on gender representation in textbooks is the assumption that making texts progressive in their construction of gender is a panacea for equality in the classroom. As this study demonstrates, however, textbooks containing traditional representations of gender can be used to challenge biases, while…

Recent studies describe Jordan as a context where the encounter between modernity and tradition in the framework of neo-liberal transformations in the labour market have brought about paradoxes affecting women's lives. Despite several policies to implement gender equality introduced by the government, the rapid reduction of the gender gap in…