Proceedings of the Global Conference on Gender Studies
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Analysis of a Mathematics Textbook with A Gender Perspective
Alejandro Rosas Mendoza, Karina Pintos Gonnet
ABSTRACT:
In this research, a mathematics textbook for the second grade of secondary school in Mexico (13-year-old students) was studied from a gender perspective. The main objective of the research was to identify what messages are transmitted regarding gender stereotypes, human bio-cultural variation and the representation of society. To identify these messages, an analysis was carried out on each of the real or imaginary characters and individuals present in the texts and illustrations of the book, taking into account the roles, skills, interests, attributes and relationships that are established with other characters according to their gender; age and social group with which they were identified. To achieve this, classification criteria were established for mentions of girl, boy, man, woman, person, individual, etc., to group the characters by gender. Decisions were also made about those characters who are only mentioned by name and their gender is not mentioned; and a table was built, all the data was collected, and its results were grouped. Graphs were also made, and they helped understand and visualize the information obtained along with the qualitative observations. When analyzing the findings of this research, an androcentric perspective is observed in the textbook, where white, male characters with purchasing power and responsible for the development of knowledge predominated. In the case of representations of female characters and other characters of non-white human bio-cultural variations, they are limited and stereotyped in terms of roles and activities.
keywords: mathematics; secondary school; human bio-cultural variation; androcentric; gender stereotypes