Genusanalys av fyra läroböcker i historia under Lpf 94 och Gy 11 : En analys med särskilt fokus på läroböckernas skildring om tiden efter 1945

Sammanfattning: This study aims to investigate how four history textbooks depict gender by focusing on the textbooks’ descriptions on the historical events after 1945. These four textbooks were all published under the 1994 or 2011 curriculum, which both mentions the importance of education to promote equality and equal opportunity for all students.  This study has chosen to use Yvonne Hirdmans “three forms of Women” as a basis for the gender analysis. This is an analytical tool which is used to analyse how the authors of the textbooks has chosen to depict men and women. In addition the study has used Yvonne Hirdmans understanding of how a “gender system” is constructed, maintained, and changed as a theoretical baseline in order to understand her “three forms of Women”.  Five different research questions have been used during this study to fulfil its’ purpose. The first research questions asked how many men and women there are in the textbooks register. The result shows that between 7,6% and 12,4% of the total number of people mentioned are women. This result is similar to earlier Swedish and international studies. The second research question asks how many images depicts men and women, and the result shows that men are overrepresented. In the third research question the study seeks to analyse how the actions of men and women are described. The result shows that all textbooks focus on the political events during the cold war, and the prominent political leaders during that time. The study’s result show that in a timespan of between 60 and 70 years, only between one and three women are mentioned in the analysed chapter. The actions of these mentioned women and women in general is that of being less importance to the actions of men. The fourth research question, about how the relation between men and women are described, hardly finds any useful answers – but some interesting ones. The fifth and final research question ask how compatible the textbooks are with the stipulations in the curriculum that was in use during the time of the textbooks’ publication. The result shows that not even one textbook can really be seen to fulfil the stipulations.  By doing a gender analysis on textbooks this study aims to continue the critical discussion about what perspectives and people should be included into the public textbooks. Even though textbooks authors can’t include every aspect imaginable, it is still important to have these debates since so many students come into contact with a textbook – especially in history.