Gender Disparity in English Textbooks by Baluchistan Textbook Board

Abstract

Gender inequality worldwide has worked its way into many Asian societies, including Pakistan (Ali et al., 2011). In Pakistani schools, textbooks are generally the sole teaching/learning resource the teachers and students rely on for all learning. The stereotypical representation of gender in these textbooks is likely to encourage school-going girls and boys to adopt the gendered roles depicted in their textbooks later in life (Dean, 2007). Although numerous researchers have undertaken the content analysis of English textbooks within the context of Pakistan, there is a severe dearth of research focusing on gender disparity in the English textbooks taught in the province of Baluchistan, while the social importance of these textbooks cannot be ignored considering the cultural context and values of Baluchistan. The current study has tapped the research gap by investigating gender depiction in the English textbooks by the Baluchistan textbook Board through a qualitative analysis using Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), precisely the Transitivity Analysis model given by M. A. K. Halliday (1976). The study has precisely explored the process-participant transitivity patterns in the contents of the selected textbooks to investigate the relative presence of both genders, their relative positioning and interaction in texts, the roles they are assigned, the activities they are engaged in, their social standing as well as the sexist language used in the contents of the textbooks. The study found gender disparity reflected in all these aspects in the selected textbooks.