Gender Stereotypes and Bias in English Language School Textbooks: Reflection from Literature Review across Different Countries

Textbooks significantly influence student learning, shaping values, beliefs, and cultural views. They convey gender roles, social norms, and biases, making it crucial to create gender-neutral materials. This requires a thorough review of existing textbooks to ensure they do not favor any gender. This review paper aims to examine five specific aspects of the selected previous research: the portrayal of gender in language and terminological aspects, visual representation, professional, occupational, and working roles representation, games and leisure time activities, cultural and regional differences in the portrayal of gender in textbooks. A wide-ranging strategy was employed to search and identify research papers from Web of Science, Scopus, Springer Link, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and ERIC. The chosen papers span the years 2007 to 2024. Out of 358 results generated, 68 publications representing 45 selected papers were chosen and themed for discussion, investigating gender stereotypes and biases in English language textbooks at the school level. Results revealed a predominantly male presence in illustrations, often in active leadership roles, while females are underrepresented or shown in passive roles. Boys are portrayed in adventurous activities, while girls are depicted in domestic pursuits, with textbooks consistently minimizing female achievements across cultures and regions. The researcher concluded that the findings are valuable for textbook development agencies, authors, and educators in creating a gender-sensitive curriculum and textbooks.