Gender Representation in English Textbook Used in Grade x of Senior High School

Abstract

This study aims at finding how English textbook published by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia for Grade X of senior high school represents gender. It is a descriptive work using content analysis as its design in looking at how gender is represented in the book both quantitatively and qualitatively.The findings showed that the text book is generally gender friendly in which it represents women and men in mostly equal manner. However, it is still not free from stereotyping attached to its female and male characters. Furthermore, the differences in verbosity, the use of question form and intensifiers by female and male characters are identified.
 Key words: gender representation, English textbook, Grade X

Preservice Teachers’ Criticality in Analysing School English Teaching Materials: Gender Representation and Islamic Perspective

“…From the perspective of English teaching materials, the problematic issues found in the reading text being assessed by the trainees are the issues that have been generally found in other studies. Specifically, in regard to the woman position at work, Abidah and Sutama (2019) and Hamidah (2017) found that women were depicted as 'less active and sociable' and inferior in English textbook. In fact, this kind of issue could emerge in any English teaching materials and can cause invalid depiction of women's role and status.…”

“…Recent studies on Indonesian English textbooks for junior and senior high schools published by the Ministry of Education and Culture, and private publishers show similar findings that coalesce around conversational turn taking and the distribution of social and professional roles. Concerning involvement in dialogs, women are described as ones talking much about feeling, and only proposing ideas and letting decisions taken by men (Abidah & Sutama, 2019;Asriyama, Saleh, & Fitriati, 2020). With social and professional roles, women are typically described as having to educate children and be responsible for daily chores (food, clothes, and cleanliness) in the household, accept decisions in the community, and serve as subordinates at work (Asriyama et al, 2020;Hamidah, 2017).…”

“…With social and professional roles, women are typically described as having to educate children and be responsible for daily chores (food, clothes, and cleanliness) in the household, accept decisions in the community, and serve as subordinates at work (Asriyama et al, 2020;Hamidah, 2017). Nonetheless, with such roles, women are concluded as "less active and sociable" and inferior (Abidah & Sutama, 2019;Hamidah, 2017). Hamidah (2017, p. 221) and Fahriany et al (2018, p. 159) contend that discrepancies presented in the English textbooks are not compatible with reality in Indonesia where males and females have equitable access to work roles and benefiting from working with each other.…”

Stereotypical Representation of Women in Junior High School Textbook: A Study of the Textbook English Published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press

“…(Abidah & Sutama, Barton & Sakwa, Canale & Furtado, Lee, Wang Weighed the characters' numbers, some textbooks are testified to feature the absence and exclusion of female characters. But still, the majority of research, with subjects from different countries and learning periods, upholds the tendency of equal attendance by its credible ratio-effectively evidence the uprise of women's right to be included and portrayed in textbooks [7,12,17,[30][31][32][33].…”

“…Hence, numerous studies were done for textbook perfection so as to approach this ideal and sustaining version, including the unveiling of the forming and norms of gender stereotypes in China, sorting out the revamp of female image, and conducting assessments for the modern textbooks-mostly quantitative analysis of the data on male-to-female characters ratio(in illustrations, texts, dialogues) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9].…”