Gender Representation in EFL Materials: An Analysis of Prospect Series as New Iranian EFL Textbooks

The highly crucial role of the textbooks as an important teaching material has led to different kinds of studies focused on textbook evaluation from a critical discourse analysis viewpoint. But in spite of the numerous studies that have addressed gender bias and stereotypes in ESL/EFL textbooks, no study has been carried out yet regarding this subject matter on newly published EFL textbooks, Prospect series, in Iran. Thus, this study intends to analyze and compare the gender representation in Prospect series including Prospect1 and Prospect 2, in order to find out if the gender representation is equally balanced in these two textbooks used in junior high schools. To do so, the prospect books were analyzed in terms of these major aspects of gender: female and male’s characters, their pictorial representations, titles, activities, and firstness of female and male in the mixed gender dialogues and finally the occupational roles of both males and females . The Fairclough’s [1]models were adopted in order to detect the ideology behind these textbooks. The results clearly indicated a gender imbalance in favor of males. The outcomes of this analytical research would be helpful to gain a better understanding of textbooks currently used in Iranian public schools. The findings have implications for material designers, teachers, and teacher trainers and provide suggestions for further research.