Gender Stereotypes and Education: Evidence from Four Muslim Countries

School education, which is widely assumed to eliminate gender gap in the society, can also reinforce and reproduce gender inequality through hidden curriculum. However, gender stereotype in school textbooks remains a largely... [ view full abstract ]

School education, which is widely assumed to eliminate gender gap in the society, can also reinforce and reproduce gender inequality through hidden curriculum. However, gender stereotype in school textbooks remains a largely overlooked issue in the ongoing global debate on the elimination of wider socioeconomic gender gap through improved educational access. This dissertation therefore uses textbooks of public secondary schools of four Muslim countries -- Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh- with the primary objective of critically reviewing textbook content with a focus on gender stereotypes. This is a descriptive cross-country research using quantitative content analysis technique. A total of 21 categories are used in order to identify gender stereotypes in the form of exclusion and misrepresentation in the textbook. Our analysis of 792 pages of the four textbooks confirms systematic pro- male bias -- only 37% of all characters used in the text are female. Systematic exclusion/underrepresentation of females is evident regardless of whether we look at text or picture. Furthermore, the selection of occupations, personal attributes, and activities ascribed show a high degree of misrepresentation of women. Female occupations are mostly traditional and lower in social prestige. Female characters used are predominantly introvert and passive in terms of personality traits. They are also shown to be mostly involved in in-door as opposed to outdoor activities when compared to their male counterparts. Country-wise analysis of the data reveals important variations. Female presence in characters is balanced in Southeast Asian textbooks (47% and 45% in Malaysia and Indonesia respectively) while the distribution in South Asian textbooks in lopsided -- females account for only 18% and 40% of all characters in Pakistani and Bangladeshi textbooks respectively. Overall, Pakistani textbooks show highest gender inequality in terms of both exclusion and misrepresentation.