Gender Representation in selected Literary Texts: Grade five to Eight EFL Textbooks in focus

Abstract

The study is a purely qualitative content analysis intending to examine gender representation in literary texts unearthing how gender dis/parity unfolds in grades five to eight English language textbooks. The design enables researchers to identify the frequency of literary texts and examine the nature of tasks driven from literary texts thereby showing gender representation and gender parity and disparity. The ways gender parity and disparity unfold in literary texts need both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Hence, data generated from literary texts are coded and organized into themes. The findings reveal that literary texts' portrayal of gender in terms of visibility is frequent. On the contrary, the theme-level representation of gender in the literary texts raises questions about previous approaches to studying gender representation. For instance, in terms of themes of literary texts, gender representation is controversial. The level of visibility and sexist language use doesn’t guarantee parity of gender representation in themes of literary texts. For instance, in the poem My mother the feminine gender is visible. Likewise, in taming a husband the feminine pronoun is visible. Besides the roles given, the gender disparity occurs in these literary texts at the theme level. Accordingly, it is suggested that literary selections for classroom use should be considered in terms of gender representation at the level of its theme to help teachers, material designers, and evaluators ensure gender representation in literary texts.