Interview with Lee Crawfurd, Center for Global Development, United Kingdom

Interview with Lee Crawfurd

###

What first drew you to study gender bias in school textbooks, and why did you choose to investigate this topic?

I was raised by a gay feminist single mother who was a school teacher and loves to challenge gender stereotypes, so this is something I've always been interested in. This personal background, combined with recent advancements in computerized text analysis and the new availability of digital textbooks, led me to this line of research.

What are the key findings from your research?

It's not really news that there is some gender bias in textbooks. What is new about our paper is being able to show how much bias there is, and how this compares across different countries. In some places, female representation is less than 30% of all characters in textbooks.

What most surprised or interested you about your findings?

One thing that really stood out to me is that there is still some bias in books being funded by the British government's aid agency, despite years of political focus on girl's education.

Your findings suggest that gender representation is more balanced in higher income countries, though stereotypes in textbooks remain common. Can you tell us more about the stereotypes seen in high income countries and low income countries?

Overall the stereotypes we see are similar in richer and poorer countries - male characters in books are more likely to be associated with words describing work and achievement, for example "leader" or "business". Female characters are more likely to be associated with words describing home, family, and their appearance, such as "wedding" or "slim".

Which countries showed highest and lowest levels of gender bias, and were there any countries that surprised you as to where they ranked?

There is really low female representation in all the large South Asian countries; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan, which wasn't too surprising but did make for depressing reading. There were some more positive surprises at the other end, with Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Rwanda showing less bias than the British and American books we looked at.

Your analysis rests on a binary view of gender, but do you think your findings suggest anything about non-binary representations of gender in the countries studied?

While our analysis currently focuses on binary gender representations, the findings highlight a broader issue of stereotyped portrayals, which could also impact non-binary individuals. Future research could certainly explore this dimension.

What do you hope your findings might lead to, and what are the next steps for your research?

Ultimately I think this is about giving people choice and freedom. Boys and girls should be free to choose how they want to live their lives. If all they see are rigid gender roles then their options are narrowed. We hope our findings will inform textbook writers and educational policymakers to create more balanced content that broadens the horizons for both boys and girls.