A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF GENDER REPRESENTATION IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS OF PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

Abstract

Education is a strong force of social change in Pakistan and the textbooks also become crucial in forming student’s mindset. Gender Representation in Secondary School English Textbooks: A Case of Punjab (Pakistan) The present research focuses on gender representation in the ELT textbooks for secondary level public schools of Punjab (Pakistan). Adopting a corpus-assisted approach, the study examines textual and pictorial material to examine patterns of gender bias and stereotyping. The results demonstrate blatant lack of representation of women with men outnumbering them not only in the depiction but also in how they are portrayed. Males exclusively tend to dominate their masculine discourses in dynamic, active roles of authority, while females are more likely to occupy passive roles in domestic environments. Women are mostly represented within a domestic context, and the men in work or leading positions. These differences indicate that textbooks could reinforce traditional gender stereotypes, which in turn may affect students’ views on their own role as men and women and subsequent career preferences.