How are gender issues covered by the curriculum?

world, texts and the classroom activities, based on their individual and collective identities”. It refers to the idea that students will have different perspectives about what it is shown in the textbooks and it will have certain impact in their way of seeing the world. 

 

Kereszty (2009) also claims that “the realizations of the relationship between one's own point of view

and the curriculum makes it possible for students to integrate different points of views, to reflect upon them, and to change them.” It means that students have the possibility to choose the way they think about any issue or topic, however, their point of view will be influenced by the perspectives shown in schools and/or in their homes. 

Tomlinson (2011, p. 11) claims that “materials to be valuable, the learning points should be potentially useful to the learners and that the learning procedures should maximize the likelihood of the learners actually learning what they want and need to learn.” Students need that the content to have some impact in their lives and is useful in their daily basis. 

 

Gender roles: In society means how we’re expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex. For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold.

Gender stereotype: Gender stereotypes are preconceived ideas whereby males and females are arbitrarily assigned characteristics and roles determined and limited by their sex. Sex stereotyping can limit the development of the natural talents and abilities of boys and girls, women and men, their educational and professional experiences as well as life opportunities in general Stereotypes about women both result from and are the cause of deeply engrained attitudes, values, norms and prejudices against women. They are used to justify and maintain the historical relations of power of men over women as well as sexist attitudes which are holding back the advancement of women”.  A stereotype is a widely accepted judgment or bias about a person or group — even though it’s overly simplified and not always accurate. Stereotypes about gender can cause unequal and unfair treatment because of a person’s gender. This is called sexism. Four basic gender stereotypes:

·         Personality traits — For example, women are often expected to be accommodating and emotional, while men are usually expected to be self-confident and aggressive.

·         Domestic behaviors — For example, some people expect that women will take care of the children, cook, and clean the home, while men take care of finances, work on the car, and do the home repairs.

·         Occupations — Some people are quick to assume that teachers and nurses are women, and that pilots, doctors, and engineers are men.

·         Physical appearance — For example, women are expected to be thin and graceful, while men are expected to be tall and muscular. Men and women are also expected to dress and groom in ways that are stereotypical to their gender (men wearing pants and short hairstyles, women wearing dresses and make-up.

        Gender equality: This refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men. Gender equality is not a women’s issue but should concern and fully engage men as well as women. Equality between women and men is seen both as a human rights issue and as a precondition for, and indicator of, sustainable people-centred development.

            Gender Blindness: This term refers to the failure to recognize that the roles and responsibilities of men/boys and women/girls are assigned to them in specific social, cultural, economic, and political contexts and backgrounds. Projects, programs, policies and attitudes which are gender blind do not take into account these different roles and diverse needs. They maintain the status quo and will not help transform the unequal structure of gender relations.

Does the number of women and man say something about the way gender is seen?

Is this textbook inclusive oriented in terms of gender?

How do the pictures in the book reflect the view of culture some people have?

Do the images and the activities promote gender stereotypes? How? Why?

Is there any relation between gender and culture in the textbook’s images?

How gender as portrayed in the text could affect students in their lives?

 

Furthermore, there are two images; one of a cartoon that represents a girl, and the other of a little girl. The images are related to an article about “The girl Day” that aims at inspiring girls to pursue engineering careers which is known by representing a career mainly for men. Following the same topic of avoiding stereotypes, there is an image in which two people are shown (a man and a woman) dancing ballet, it shows that both women and men can dance different styles.

Nevertheless, there is a relation between the images previously mentioned and the way gender is seen. First, it is important to mention that in the textbook it is given importance to women in different jobs and how they are capable to do the same things that men do, as it was mentioned before. Although, there are some other stereotypical images present in the textbook such as in the unit of “The Arts” there are some images which consider women related to fashion and shopping. Some images are from a fashion show in which models are wearing dresses. Besides, there is a man using Photoshop in a picture of a woman with many bags, showing that women go shopping. Regarding that, gender is seen as a concept that shows some kind of equality. Conversely, it can be concluded that the textbook is inclusive oriented.

 

In addition, there is a relation between the way gender and culture are covered from the textbook images. From the content shown we can conclude that gender is related to culture because it depends on the culture of the people who make this type of books the way different topics can be covered. For instance, some cultures still believe that women are inferior than men, so that the textbooks will show that point of view, on the other hand, some cultures, as the one shown in this textbook, that believe in gender equality; men and women are able to do the same things.

 

 

Regarding all the analysis made to this textbook we can point out that this topic can affect students’ perspective about gender roles, as it was mentioned before. First, it is known that students learn not only at a conscious level but also at a subconscious level as hooper hansen (1992) claims in Tomlinson (2011, p. 21)  “He enables the learner to receive the information through different cerebral processes and in different state of consciousness so that it is stored in many different parts of the brain, maximising recall” 

 

There is also a relation to the hidden curriculum since according to this, there are some elements and concepts that are implicitly taught to students. In this case the hidden message behind the gender issue is covered by the images shown in the text, a way of seeing the world is being taught in the book.

 

As Subrahmanian, R (2003) mentioned that “a consideration of gender equality in education therefore needs to be understood as the right to education [access and participation], as well as rights within education [gender-aware educational environments, processes, and outcomes], and rights through education [meaningful education outcomes that link education equality with wider processes of gender justice]”. This quote reaffirms how we should include gender equality in education and how it is covered through the curriculum.