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Prospects (2008) 38:345361 DOI 10.1007/s11125-009-9086-1
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Rae Lesser Blumberg
Published online: 7 April 2009 UNESCO IBE 2009
Abstract Gender bias in textbooks (GBIT) is a low-prole education issue, given the 72,000,000 children who still have no access to schooling, but this article argues that GBIT is: (1) an important, (2) near-universal, (3) remarkably uniform, (4) quite persistent but (5) virtually invisible obstacle on the road to gender equality in educationan obstacle camouaged by taken-for-granted stereotypes about gender roles. Specically, GBIT: (1) is important because (a) textbooks occupy *80% of classroom time, and (b) it may contribute to lowering girls achievements, especially in weak schools in poor countries;
(2) has been found worldwide to varying degrees (except, perhaps, Sweden in recent years); (3) involves nearly identical patterns of under-representation of females, plus stereotypes of both genders occupational and household roles that overwhelmingly underplay womens rising worldly importance; (4) is decreasing very slowly, according to second generation re-studies; and (5) remains obscured by the hidden-in-plain-sight system of gender stratication and roles. Case studies from Syria, India, Romania, China and the US document these points. Other case studies from Sweden and Latin America describe government initiatives to reduce GBIT, with differing levels of success. Totally revising textbooks (and curricula) to eliminate this bias is quite unlikely, partly because it is very costly. The article concludes by presenting inexpensive alternate methods that can combat GBIT.
Keywords Girls education Textbooks Gender-bias
This is a condensed, edited version of a Background Paper for the 2008 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Education for All by 2015Will we make it? (Paris: UNESCO 2008). That report, Gender Bias in Textbooks: A Hidden Obstacle on the Road to Gender Equality in Education, with a large, comprehensive bibliography, is available online at: unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001555/155509e.pdf. I wish to express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent assistance of Meghan OLeary, M.A., University of Virginia, who worked on the 2008 Global Monitoring Report Background Paper on which this article is based, and Diana Bowen, M.A., University of Virginia, who worked on the present piece.
R. L. Blumberg (&)
Sociology Department, University of Virginia, 538 Cabell Hall, P.O. Box 400766, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USAe-mail: [email protected]
The invisible obstacle to educational equality: gender bias in textbooks
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