Stereotypes In Textbooks, Again. A Study On Primary School Textbooks After The Polite Agreement

This study aims to investigate the ways males and females are represented in primary school textbooks after the Polite, the publishing self-regulation agreement with the aim of introducing an equal representation of males and females in school books. Two groups of textbooks are analysed, published, respectively, in 2008-10 and 2014, for a total of 1084 texts (Corsini & Scierri, 2016; Scierri, 2017). For this purpose, the quantitative text analysis grid developed by Irene Biemmi (2010) was used and a comparison with the results of her previous study was made. In order to analyse gender representations in textbook stories, two aspects were considered: the space dedicated to the two genders as protagonists and the way they are represented. First of all, it emerged that the space assigned to the two genders as protagonists of the stories is unequal: for every 10 female protagonists, there are 15 male protagonists in the 2008-10 editions and 19 in the 2014 editions. Secondly, the way in which genders are presented to readers presents several disparities. The following are the main stereotypes found: adventure is reserved for the male gender; men move mainly in open spaces, women remain confined in closed spaces; in the past, women almost do not exist; similarly, they do not exist in the informative texts concerning important characters of the past or present. Another important finding from the analysis concerns the way the world of work is represented. In the representation of the professional roles of adults, there is, in fact, a strong dissymmetry between the two genders: the male gender is recognised as having a professional identity to a significantly greater extent than the female gender; moreover, even when this identity is recognised for women, they can recognise themselves within a restricted typology of roles compared to men, in which the most stereotypical jobs attributed to women continue to prevail: first and foremost, the primary school teacher. Conversely, women are recognised as having a parental identity to a greater extent than men: the latter are primarily professionals, while women are primarily mothers. In the final analysis, comparing these data with the results collected at the beginning of 2000 by Irene Biemmi, no changes emerge. In conclusion, no distinction was found between publishers who have joined the Polite agreement and those who have not. We can assume that although several publishing houses adhered to the Polite self-regulatory code at the time, this was not followed by a conscious intervention in textbooks to ensure a fair and stereotype-free representation of the two genders.