Date of Award

2010

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

School of Education

Abstract

In 1992, the Secretary of Education of the Dominican Republic set an objective of eliminating gender stereotypes that discriminate against women from textbooks (Díaz Santana, 1996; Mateo Diclo, n.d.). My research is a historical comparison of two sets of texts published in the years 1996-1997 and 2005-2007 focusing on visual representations portraying gender roles with the purpose of ascertaining if progress is being made towards this objective. I analyze a total of six books, three books from 1996-1997 and three from 2005-2007. The examined textbooks include two second grade Natural Sciences, two fourth grade Spanish, and two sixth grade Social Sciences with each subject including one text from 1996-1997 and one from 2005-2007. I examine the textbooks to determine whether the visual images of males and females are "sex-fair" and/or "sex-affirmative" (concepts developed by Scott and Schau [1985]). Sex-fair texts have females appearing in half of the number of images and the images portray both females and males equally in all societal roles whether they are culturally traditional or not. Sex-affirmative texts stress the portrayal of females and males in roles opposite their traditional role (Eklund Koza, 1994). I conclude that according to the six texts analayzed, female stereotyped images have reduced, but male stereotyped images have increased. Therefore, the Dominican government has been successful to some extent in taking steps towards the elimination of gender stereotypes.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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