The content analysis of gender representations in two sets of coursebooks: Open Doors and Project Explore

In today's world, gender stereotyping, unequal distributions of gender roles, and stereotyping against women are among the highly debated issues. As a considerable part of children's attitudes towards gender roles in the societies are shaped at school, material developers are expected to present equal representations in terms of gender in their materials. Following this mindset, this study investigates two sets of ELT coursebooks Open Doors and Project Explore published 25 years apart following a content analysis to see the changes in gender representation over the years by comparing and contrasting the representations in both series. To determine how gender is represented in these ELT coursebook series, the researcher analyzes three different main categories: a) Linguistic Features, b) Representation, and c) Stereotypes that are adopted from the guidelines presented by Florent et. al. (1994). The results of the content analysis show that although there are more gender-fair representations in the more recently published coursebooks, there are still many examples of unequal gender representations. In both series, characters are still portrayed in ways that reinforce stereotypes; male characters are more frequently seen in written and visual texts, while female characters are more frequently seen in domestic roles, household duties, and subordinate jobs.