Gender Gap in Stem and Gender Portrayal in Science Textbooks for Upper Secondary Education

The gender gap with male dominance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) remains persistent across most OECD countries. The development of occupational aspirations is based on judgement of the degree of match between individual self-image and the image of an occupation. In this process, the sex type of an occupation is especially crucial for career choice. Judging whether an occupational sex type is right or wrong for oneself is embedded in various social expectations associated with the socio-culturally established gender roles that children and youth acquire in socialization contexts Gottfredson (2002, 2005). Thus, the present study aims at analyzing gender portrayal in science textbooks to contribute to knowledge that can improve gender equality in STEM occupations. Our research is based on content analysis of selected senior high school science textbooks used in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. This analysis employed a newly developed category system for text-based as well as image-based materials in textbooks. Deductive predetermined categories were applied and enriched with inductive categories. The results revealed a highly asymmetric and stereotyped portrayal of gender. First, male protagonists largely dominated female protagonists in text- and image-based representations. Second, male protagonists were portrayed in an agentic role, whereas communal traits were attributed to female protagonists. Lastly, science was represented as a male domain.