3 textbooks and to minimize gender bias in their material for teaching. This knowledge can
help teachers and practicum students to choose ideal English textbooks.
2. Theoritical Framework
As it is known before, there are many studies focusing on gender bias in textbooks conducted by many researchers all over the world. They find some ways that can be used to
measure the gender bias in textbooks: 2a Visibility
According to Stockdale’s study in an EFL textbook 2006, visibility principally refers to the appearance of female and male characters presented in textbooks. The findings
of Stockdale’s study shows that the percentage of male characters is higher than female ones. Also, the female characters are named without an active role. Stockdale 2006 also says,
because the number of females and males is almost equal in the world, an ideal textbook ought to present both gender equally. Nevertheless, Poulou’s study in EFL dialogues towards
two Greek foreign language textbooks 1997 finds that visibility can be identified through: The number of utterances and words used by female characters vs male
characters. The length of talk between female and male characters.
The initation and closing moves in the dialogues by female vs male characters.
The findings of Poulou’s study shows that the dialogues in those two EFL textbooks have more male characters and more words allocated to male characters. Mkucu 2004,who
conducts the study about gender roles in textbooks used at Tanzania primary schools, adds that visibility can be recognized through:
Reproductive or maintanance activities: roles that are performed at home for caring the family e.g housekeeping and cooking.
4 Productive activities: roles that are done to produce things and services for
earnings e.g manufacturing and fishing. Community roles: activities performed for general society well-being e.g
attending meetings or funeral activities. The result of Mkucu’s study shows that there are more male character appears than
female ones in the textbooks he analysed. Therefore, the textbooks studied by the researchers above are considered as gender bias because it reflects a favoritsm towards males characters.
2b Firstness Porecca 1984, in a study of sexism in ESL textbook currently finds that although
there is no certain rule that female characters or male characters should be mentioned or put first before another character, the placement of a certain gender first when two nouns or
pronouns presented as a pair can be interpreted as giving a higher status to the certain gender e.g man and woman, mother and father. However, it is better to present words or
expressions as a pair equally frequently.
2c Nouns and Pronouns The use of nouns and pronouns describing men and women can also reflect gender
bias in textbooks. For example, Alrabaa’s study in Syrian Schools textbooks 1985 discovers that male-centered language was used according to his additional analysis on a textbook
specifically, masculine nouns such as mankind, and the pronouns. 2d Discourse Roles
In reality, society traditionally distinguishes the role of male and female. Since babies were born, parents already gave different treatments to a baby boy or a baby girl by giving
name and toys. They provide different toys to their children and encourage them to get involved in different activity based on their gender Santrock, 2006. This personal traits
builds an image of masculinity and femininity. Thus, the society impressions and beliefs
5 cause the role categorization based on gender is called stereotype gender Parkay, 2008. For
example, mother is cooking in the kitchen, and father goes to work. To put it simply, stereotype gender influences the discourse roles between female and male. Mkucu 2004
also says that behaviour, attitudes, interests, and skills that a culture considers appropriates for males and females, are expected to fulfill. For example, boys are supposed to play with
trucks, girls to play with dolls.The girls should show their emotion and boys hide it. Boys are supposed to be aggressive and active, girls are supposed to be passive Parkay, 2008.
Mischel 1970 argues that exposure to traditional gender-typed symbolic models in children’s books,television, and movies play a role in the vicarious learning of such
traditional gender role standards. Due to the limited space, the limited time, and the difficultness, this study will only
focus on pronouns, discourse roles, and visibility to analyze Real Time for Junior High
School students year VII. 3.
The Study 3a Context of the study
This study is to analyze the representation of gender bias in Real Time for Junior High School students year VII textbook which is used as an English teacher’s guide in
Christian Junior High School 2, Salatiga. 3b
Materials This study studies only one English textbook entitled Real Time for Junior High
School students year VII that uses KTSP curricula. KTSP stands for Kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan which means operational curricula that is organized and is done by each
educational grade which contains of aim of education for each grade, structure and content curricula for each grade, calendar of education, and the syllabus Masitoh, 2012. This
textbook is written by a female author named Nina Bates and is published by Erlangga.
6 There are seven units consisted 20 listening and speaking activities, 7 written activities, 7
reading texts, 17 grammar focuses, 13 vocabularies, 7 projects, and 7 cultural notes. Due to the limited space, the focus of this study only includes 17 grammar focuses, 7 reading texts,
and 53 exercises which are following the reading texts and grammar focuses. As it was noted before, this textbook is choosen to be analyzed because it is currently being used at Christian
Junior High School 2 Salatiga. Also, it may be used at other junior high schools in Indonesia. 3c Data collection Instrument
This study collected the data from an English textbook entitled Real Time for Junior High School students year VII. The data was collected by analyzing content in language focus
and reading passages. In analyzing the dialogues and the reading passage, every word and every line of Real Time for Junior High School students year VII were read and reread to see
its content and later the content analysis in three categories, which are pronoun, discourse roles, and visibility,will be very helpful to make judgements about the textbook. The
following table is provided to make the data collection more crystal clear: Table 1
Example of content analysis in Real Time for Junior High School students year VII
Unit Input text
Discourse Roles
2 My mother makes fried rice for
lunch. exercise 1, page 31 Making fried rice is a categorized role for
female. According to Suyanto and Astuti 2010, a woman culturally is the one who
responsible for any household needs such as meals. This text clearly represent a
traditional stereotypes of female in Indonesia. 4
My father washes his car every Sunday page 30
Since women are only responsible for household needs, washing a car is categorized
to a male role.
7 In this study it is not necessary to also analyze pictures in the textbook which are used as
illustration, since analyzing the pictures will be too drudgery to cover in this study. 3d Procedures of data collection
The study used qualitative analysis since the data collected were in form of texts. It included several steps to collect the data. First, it is important to have a copy of Real Time for
Junior High School students’ year VII. Second, the sentences in grammar section and reading texts were analysed quantitatively based on three categories which were pronouns, discourse
role, and visibility. Having finished analyzing Real Time for Junior High School students’ year VII according those three categories, the findings discussion and the conclusions were
made.
4. Findings and Discussion
