Gender diversity in textbooks

an analysis of illustrations in beginner’s books in foreign languages

Abstract

This article analyses the visual representation of gender in beginner’s books in the foreign language subjects French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German, as textbooks are often students’ first encounter with the subject. Previous research suggests that women are both underrepresented and stereotypically portrayed in textbooks. The article presents a quantitative analysis of the visual materials in recent Norwegian textbooks, and finds a relatively even distribution of women and men in the materials, but the absence of non-binary people and gender diversity. The results point to limitations of existing methods for mapping visual representations of gender in textbooks and the need for more open representations of gender in this type of material.