Women's Gender Roles in History Textbooks in Turkey

Abstract

Although the notion of gender has a biological meaning, the concept of gender refers to a social construction that emerges from a biological basis. This construction includes cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity that are more appropriate for social life. In the definition and distinction of gender roles in social life construction, the discussion of the public and private sphere is seen. Textbooks have an important place as a dominant discourse tool in the public and private sphere debate. Therefore, textbooks in general and history textbooks in particular have an important share in this debate. Textbooks convey stereotypes of gender roles to students and contain descriptions of roles. On the other hand, history textbooks construct and legitimize the historical context along with the definitions of roles. Therefore, history textbooks have an important share in the production of women's gender roles. In this context, it is determined that the purpose of the study is to evaluate the gender roles of women in compulsory or history courses textbooks in the 2019-2020 academic year in Turkey.