In their 2024 working paper "Sexist Textbooks," Lee Crawfurd, Christelle Saintis-Miller and Rory Todd, researchers with the Center for Global Development, Washignton D.C., investigate gender bias in textbooks from 34 countries. The paper explores whether this bias correlates with the legal and economic status of women in these countries. It analyses 1,255 textbooks using word lists of gendered words, family and work terms. To assess gender stereotypes, the paper measures the co-occurrence of gendered names and pronouns with specific terms (for example ‘he’ and ‘doctor’). It also uses word embeddings to analyse stereotypes and biases and applies part-of-speech tagging to reveal a skewed distribution of certain adjectives and verbs across genders. This reveals patterns regarding the depiction of male and female characters and their actions in textbooks. The study uncovers significant gender bias in the textbooks, with stereotypes more prevalent in lower and lower-middle-income countries. However, the authors acknowledge limitations, such as relying solely on English-language textbooks, potential imprecision in methods, and difficulties distinguishing content to be read by students and other text such as information about the publisher...
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- India
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- Center for Global Development
