Browsing by Author "Salmi, Annina"

The purpose of my Bachelor´s Thesis was to study both the quantity of masculine and feminine characters presented in elementary school textbooks as well as the roles the characters of each gender are given. Prior studies on the subject (Dementjeff 2011; Tainio & Teräs 2010; Palmu 1992) have indicated that feminine characters are underrepresented in school textbooks as well as being given stereotypical gender roles. This is an important subject to study because working life gender segregation in Finland is strong. Based on previous studies my assumption is that elementary school textbooks still present gender roles in a stereotypical manner. The research material consisted of four elementary school textbooks, two mathematics and two in native Finnish language. Two of the books were published after the implementation of the Finnish government´s equality program. Mathematics and native Finnish language books were chosen because these subjects are taught the most, based on hours in the curriculum. The study was done as a qualitative content analysis. A decision to examine the material through a theory based content analysis was made because the study material´s categorization I based on a previously established framework. A calculation was made on the amount of feminine and masculine characters as well as the amount of characters whose gender could not be determined, based on the text or images. The characters that were found were divided into predetermined groups: masculine characters, feminine characters and neutral characters. The results show, that on average, the studied textbooks contained more masculine than feminine characters. In the newer textbooks, there was evidence of an aim to portray characters of both genders in equal quantity. However, there was no evident difference in the gender roles presented in either the older or newer textbooks. The masculine and feminine characters, portrayed in the images and text, had been given traditional gender based characteristics and occupations. As a conclusion it can be stated that gender roles are still presented in a very stereotypical manner in school textbooks