An analysis of the portrayal of women in junior secondary school history textbooks in Malawi.
Loading...
Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study examines the portrayal of women in junior secondary school history
textbooks in Malawi. It seeks to explore how women are portrayed and establishes
reasons for the portrayal of women in particular ways in these textbooks. The visual
and verbal text of three history textbooks used at junior secondary level in Malawi
was analysed.
The study is guided by the critical paradigm and the qualitative feminist approach to
research using documentary or secondary data studies design. It uses feminist
theory to analyse and understand the portrayal of women in the textbooks studied.
Specifically the study uses a bricolage of six feminist theories namely liberal, radical,
Marxist, socialist, black and African feminisms. Three methods of textual analysis
were used to analyse the textbooks and these are content analysis, visual semiotic
analysis, and open coding.
It was concluded in this study that women are oppressed in their portrayal in junior
secondary school history textbooks in Malawi and that their oppression manifested
through marginalisation, stereotyping, silencing and limited representation as
exceptional historical characters. Furthermore, it was found that Malawian women
were under-represented despite the fact that the textbooks were produced in their
own country. Malawian women comprised a negligible population of the women
contained in the textbooks studied which portrays them as being non-existent in
history. This finding is not supported by literature and therefore I would argue that it
adds a new dimension to the existing literature on the portrayal of women in history
textbooks.
Among other factors such as race, Capitalism and the African culture, it was
concluded that patriarchal beliefs were the major reason for the oppression of
women in these textbooks. Therefore, unless patriarchy is uprooted in the minds of
people, the oppression of women in society in all its manifestations, which
permeates history textbooks, will largely remain the same as evidenced by the
corroboration of findings between this study and previous studies conducted in
history textbooks.
This study makes a significant contribution to history textbook research and feminist
research in textbooks. It carries on the tradition of researching women in textbooks
which was started by Catherine de Pisan in the first century AD. Unlike previous
studies which only revealed under-representation of women, this study documents
the frequency in which the few women mentioned in the text were referred. My study
therefore enhances the debate on the under-representation of women both in history
textbooks and textbooks of other subjects by highlighting less frequent mentioning of
women as a form of marginalisation.
Description
Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.
Keywords
Textbook bias -- Malawi., Women -- Education -- Malawi., Sex discrimination in education -- Malawi., Theses -- Education.