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Abstract
This article focuses on the process of gender identity construction through the educational system from a socio-cultural perspective. Socialisation operates as a strategy to protect social unity and group superiority. Although socialisation is an enduring process involving various institutions, childhood is a vital period of gender socialisation whereby schools and school textbooks play a substantial role as the first official sources of socialisation in children. Using content analysis method, this article focuses on Iran’s primary school textbooks. The results support the pattern of ‘gender bias’, rather than ‘gender fairness’. This is a more evident observation in the higher educational grades. The patterns highlighted here are evidently incompatible with socio-demographic progresses in women’s status over recent years, which call for revision in the school education resources in this context.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions and constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers of Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education and generous editorial assistance of Mr Parham Foroutan (PhD candidate at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia). Earlier versions of this manuscript were presented to Sociology Seminar Programme (Department of Sociology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, March 22, 2017), International Conference of New Zealand Political Studies Association (The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, November 2016), The Annual Meeting of The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (Newport Beach, California, The United States of America, 23 – 25th October 2015), and Seminar at Middle Eastern And Islamic Studies of California State University, Northridge, California, USA, October 27, 2015.