Analysis Of Gender Bias In Secondary School History Textbooks Of Afghanistan

Textbooks are almost the only teaching and learning materials for many reasons in Afghanistan that are have been using by both teachers and students.Depiction of women and men in the textbook have great impact on?re?construction of gender identity,and have great importance for the formation of the world perception of the students thorough education.In spite of undeniable role of textbooks on the socialization processes,biased image of women or men will affect negatively students?personalities and society as a whole.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to investigate gender biases in history textbooks of Afghanistan and to figure out how females and males depicted in the texts,illustrations,inquiries,and students?activities of selected history textbooks.More importantly,this research examined gender biases in current secondary(grade 7^th,8^th,and 9^th)and high school(grade 10^th,11^th,and 12^th)history textbooks that were designed by Ministry of Education and have been taught as an obligatory subject of curriculum in Afghanistan widely.In the present study,content analysis method from gender lens based on Blumberg gender biases model as research conceptual framework,and gender socialization theories as theoretical bases of current study,have been performed to analyze the norms,values,and messages that content texts and illustrations transmit to the users.The findings revealed different types of gender biases such as;exclusion,invisibility,stereotype,misrepresentation,marginalization,unreality,linguistic bias,biased roles and occupations that were existed in the content texts and illustrations of examined history textbooks.The findings indicate that several parts of evaluated textbooks suggest a huge gap between male and female representation,which in some textbook has been started from its cover to the content table references,content texts,illustrations,and students?activities.Moreover,women have been presented as objects of banding political relationship between politicians which is so called political marriage,and there were female characters presented as passive and having secondary position in a group picture which will convey the message that women are less important.Similarly,women have insufficient spaces in both content texts and illustrations of examined history textbooks.Furthermore,linguistic bias has been noticed one of the most common biases across textbooks which appeared in the forms of men supremacy,masculine names and adjectives.In addition,women have been portrayed in firmly limited range of professions,and they have been excluded from leadership,economic and education roles which are high-status and have great contribution in the development of a country.Notwithstanding,existence of aforementioned biases in the textbooks will produce numerous challenges and problems such as:prejudice,sexism,discriminations,exploitation,oppression,marginalization,lake of foundation of identifications,and lake of information about women contributions in the national history.The analysis of reasons which were rendering gender biases in current study history textbooks recognized as traditional method of historiography,male-dominated authorship,and exclusion of women eras of changes which considered as preliminary explanation of gender biases.Therefore,recommendations such as policy reforms,providing training and guidance for department of teaching and learning materials of MoE,textbooks contributors,teachers and parents seems helpful to alter the problems of gender biases and guarantee education equality.