Abstract
This paper seeks to investigate whether the Indonesian government's attempt to promote a gender-equal society in recent decades and improve gender awareness are reflected in patterns of gender representation in EFL textbooks in secondary schools. The study made an analysis of four compulsory textbooks published in 2016 with corpus linguistic tools (e.g. pronouns, occupation, amount of talk) and how gender is represented in the visuals (or illustrations) through conducting frequency counts of the occurrence of male and female characters and the spheres of activities they engaged, to investigate the ration of female-to-male appearances, the extent of use of gender-neutral, and gender-marked constructions, common address titles for reference, and order of appearance of women and men. The findings show that there is a need for evaluation of the existing language textbooks in secondary schools, with the aim of promoting a more gender-balanced learning material. Moreover, the classroom teachers raise the need for the promotion of initial as well as in-service training for teachers on issues of ‘gender stereotypes’, ‘language sexism’ and ‘gender-mainstreaming policies’.
Highlights
Gender inequality that exists in many countries is one of many challenges that the world faces, albeit the governments of these countries have tried to employ various innovational elucidations to reform this issue
This paper seeks to investigate whether the Indonesian government's attempt to promote a genderequal society in recent decades and improve gender awareness are reflected in patterns of gender representation in EFL textbooks in secondary schools
The findings show that there is a need for evaluation of the existing language textbooks in secondary schools, with the aim of promoting a more gender-balanced learning material
Summary
Gender inequality that exists in many countries is one of many challenges that the world faces, albeit the governments of these countries have tried to employ various innovational elucidations to reform this issue. Gebregeorgis (2016) explicates gender as relationships and roles that is selected a priori by the society for both men and women, and it is considered as influential cultural and social values, traditions, and customs, which is changing over time and place. Gender inequality and bias are still present in many societies, especially in developing countries and in the Middle East (Al-Qatawneh & Al-Rawashdeh, 2019; Gebregeorgis, 2016; Barton & Sakwa, 2012; Yang, 2011). One of the policies is Indonesian Republic Ministry of Education and Culture
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