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Claim analyzed
General“Previous studies on gender representation in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks have mostly focused on the frequency of male and female characters and their occupational roles.”
Submitted by Cosmic Eagle a78d
The conclusion
The claim captures the main pattern in earlier EFL textbook gender research. Reviews and case studies commonly describe the field as dominated by quantitative counts of male and female visibility and role distributions, including occupations. However, that summary is somewhat narrow because many studies also examined domestic roles, visual prominence, ordering, and discourse or agency.
Caveats
- The phrase "occupational roles" is narrower than the broader role categories many studies used, which often included domestic and family roles too.
- A meaningful secondary strand of research analyzed discourse, agency, turn-taking, lexical choices, and power relations, not just character counts.
- The strongest support comes from review-style and peer-reviewed studies; weaker items in the source list do not materially change the overall conclusion.
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Sources
Sources used in the analysis
In this paper, we conduct the first large-scale study of gender bias in school textbooks across 34 countries using automated text analysis. We examine **how often women and men are mentioned**, what **occupations** are associated with each gender, and how these patterns have changed over time. Our analysis shows that women are consistently under-represented in terms of **frequency of mentions** and are less often associated with prestigious occupations.
In the literature review section, the author notes that many existing studies on gender in English textbooks investigate indicators such as "the number and frequency of male and female characters, occupational roles, family roles, activity types, and social status" in illustrations and texts. The present study itself focuses on the frequency of appearances of male and female characters and on the distribution of their occupational roles in the illustrations of five junior middle school English textbooks.
The introduction summarizes previous work: "Most foreign and domestic studies show that there is gender inequality in English textbooks, usually manifested in social status, occupational roles, family roles, types of activities and activity spaces." In the research design, gender representation is operationalized mainly through four dimensions: "the number and frequency of male and female characters, occupational roles, role behaviors, and the status of outstanding figures."
The books were inspected for the appearance of sexism and the results revealed **sexual bias in the materials**: **male characters were depicted more often than female characters** in texts and illustrations. In addition, men were depicted in a wider range of **occupational roles**, whereas women were largely confined to domestic or traditionally female occupations.
The purpose of this study was to investigate gender representation in Iranian high school EFL textbooks by examining the frequency of male and female characters and the kinds of roles they perform. Results indicated that male characters outnumber female characters in both texts and illustrations and that males are associated with a broader variety of occupations, while females are mostly portrayed in domestic or stereotypically feminine jobs.
In the literature review, the author notes that "most studies have found that English textbooks generally contain gender bias and stereotypical images, usually examined through indicators such as the number of male and female characters, occupational types, family role allocation, types of daily and sports activities, and order of appearance." The present study adds a transitivity-system perspective, but still first quantifies "the total number of male and female participants and compares their distribution across different process types."
The review of previous research on gender in EFL textbooks notes that earlier studies have tended to focus on "the relative number of male and female characters, their visibility in texts and illustrations, and the distribution of occupational and domestic roles". The author points out that, building on this tradition, the present study examines not only "the frequency of male and female characters and their occupational roles" but also their linguistic agency and participation patterns.
The research questions guiding this study were: Are male and female characters equally represented in the visuals of the selected textbooks? How are male and female roles depicted in terms of occupations in the texts and visuals? Findings revealed that there is not a balanced representation of characters in the three textbooks; males were significantly more frequent than female characters in both texts and visuals, and were given a wider range of occupations.
The aim of this study is to investigate how gender is presented and represented in two of the English language textbooks in Jordan, namely, Action Pack 11 and Action Pack 12. The analysis focuses on **the frequency of male and female characters**, the **types of activities** they are engaged in, and their **occupational roles**. Results showed that male characters appeared more frequently and were depicted in a larger variety of occupations than female characters.
In the literature review, the authors state: "Most previous studies on gender in EFL and ESL textbooks have focused on quantitative aspects such as the frequencies of male and female characters, the number of male versus female images, and the distribution of occupational and domestic roles." They then add that their own study also examines linguistic aspects of representation in addition to these traditional quantitative measures.
The methods section reports: "In the data analysis procedure, a frequency count was done to determine the number of roles female and male characters that are attributed." The study analyzes "how often male and female characters appear in texts and illustrations and the kinds of occupational and domestic roles they are associated with." Results point out that males appear more frequently and are more often portrayed in diverse occupations, while females are more concentrated in traditional roles.
The author explicitly critiques the dominant methodology in the field: "Previous research on gender in EFL textbooks has mostly been quantitative, focusing on the frequency of male and female characters and their distribution across occupational and domestic roles." In contrast, this study employs critical discourse analysis to explore how gender identities are constructed in the texts, rather than only how often males and females appear.
The article describes its analytical framework: "Key areas of analysis include the number of domestic and occupational roles assigned to male, female, and gender-neutral characters, the range of activities they engage in, and the frequency of their appearance across units." It emphasizes that the study "compares how often male and female characters occur and what jobs or household roles they hold" in two sets of junior high school EFL textbooks.
The paper states: "This research investigates gender representation in Indonesian EFL textbooks by analyzing the frequency of male and female characters in dialogues and reading passages and by classifying their roles into occupational and domestic categories." It notes that the study "focuses on how often male and female characters appear, what professions they have, and whether they are placed in public or private (home) spheres."
Contrasting with strictly quantitative approaches, this study explains: "Rather than only counting male and female characters, the present research adopts a critical discourse analysis framework to examine how masculinity and femininity are constructed in the dialogues and reading passages." The authors argue that "previous studies often focused on numerical imbalances and occupational roles, but the present study pays more attention to underlying discourses, lexical choices, and power relations encoded in the texts."
Scholarly work on gender in EFL textbooks since the 1980s has commonly measured **how often male and female characters appear** and **what occupations they hold**, but a non-trivial strand of research has additionally examined other dimensions: turn-taking and speech acts in dialogues, visual positioning in images, firstness, and the portrayal of personality traits and agency. Thus, while frequency and occupational roles are central and recurring variables, they are not the only focus of previous studies.
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Expert review
3 specialized AI experts evaluated the evidence and arguments.
Expert 1 — The Logic Examiner
The logical chain from evidence to claim is strong: Sources 10, 12, and 7 — which are literature reviews or meta-commentaries on the field — explicitly characterize prior EFL textbook gender research as 'mostly' or 'predominantly' quantitative, centered on frequency counts and occupational/domestic role distributions. This is direct evidence supporting the claim's specific wording. The opponent's rebuttal commits a scope-shift fallacy: the existence of a 'non-trivial strand' of studies using discourse analysis or examining agency does not logically negate the claim that the majority focus was on frequency and occupational roles. Source 16 itself concedes that frequency and occupational roles are 'central and recurring variables,' and Source 15 frames its own CDA approach as a contrast to what 'previous studies often focused on' — implicitly confirming the dominant pattern. The word 'mostly' in the claim is a qualified generalization, and the evidence logically supports it: multiple independent meta-level sources confirm this characterization of the field's dominant tradition, while the alternative dimensions cited by the opponent are acknowledged as secondary or supplementary strands rather than co-equal foci. The inferential chain is sound and the claim follows directly from the evidence.
Expert 2 — The Context Analyst
The claim omits that a meaningful subset of EFL textbook gender studies also analyze discourse/agency features (e.g., turn-taking, firstness, lexical choices, power relations, visual positioning) and often frame these as correctives to earlier counting approaches, so “mostly” can sound like the field is limited to only two variables (Sources 12, 15, 16). Even with that context, multiple literature reviews and many empirical studies still characterize the dominant/typical prior approach as quantitative frequency/visibility counts plus (often) occupational-role coding, so the overall impression that these were the main foci in much prior work remains accurate (Sources 7, 10, 12; also 4, 5, 14).
Expert 3 — The Source Auditor
The most authoritative sources in this pool are PLOS ONE/PubMed Central (Source 1, high-authority peer-reviewed journal), De Gruyter's International Review of Applied Linguistics (Source 12, high-authority), and ERIC-indexed publications (Sources 5, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15). Critically, Sources 10, 12, and 7 — among the more authoritative sources — explicitly characterize the dominant tradition in EFL textbook gender research as quantitative, centered on frequency counts and occupational role distributions, while also noting that some studies go further; Source 15 (moderate authority) and Source 16 (LLM background knowledge, lowest reliability) acknowledge additional dimensions but frame them as departures from or additions to the dominant quantitative focus. The claim uses the qualifier 'mostly,' which is well-supported by the preponderance of credible, independent sources: multiple literature reviews from peer-reviewed and ERIC-indexed journals confirm that frequency of characters and occupational roles constitute the primary analytical framework in prior EFL textbook gender studies, with discourse analysis and agency dimensions representing a recognized but secondary strand — making the claim substantively accurate as stated.
Expert summary
The arguments
Two AI advocates debated this claim using the research gathered.
Argument for
Multiple independent literature reviews explicitly characterize the dominant tradition in EFL textbook gender research as quantitative, centering on counting the relative frequency/visibility of male vs. female characters and mapping the occupational (and closely related domestic) roles assigned to each gender (Source 12, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching; Source 10, ERIC/Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies; Source 7, e-FLT). This description is corroborated by numerous empirical EFL textbook studies that operationalize “gender representation” primarily through frequency counts and occupational-role coding (e.g., Source 4, Theory and Practice in Language Studies; Source 5, ERIC; Source 14, TESL-EJ), so the claim that previous studies have mostly focused on frequency and occupational roles is well-supported.
The Proponent's argument conflates 'dominant tradition' with 'mostly focused,' ignoring that Sources 12 and 7 — the very sources cited to establish this dominance — explicitly position themselves as departures from that tradition by incorporating critical discourse analysis and linguistic agency, thereby demonstrating that the field had already meaningfully diversified beyond frequency and occupational roles. Furthermore, the Proponent selectively omits Source 15 and Source 16, which directly acknowledge that prior studies extended to lexical choices, power relations, turn-taking, visual positioning, and personality traits — dimensions that collectively constitute a 'non-trivial strand' sufficient to render the word 'mostly' an oversimplification of the field's actual breadth.
Argument against
The claim that previous studies have 'mostly' focused on frequency and occupational roles is undermined by the very sources that appear to support it: Source 7 notes that prior studies also examined 'linguistic agency and participation patterns,' Source 12 explicitly critiques the field for being too narrowly quantitative and itself employs critical discourse analysis, Source 15 highlights that prior work extended to 'lexical choices and power relations,' and Source 16 acknowledges a 'non-trivial strand' covering turn-taking, visual positioning, firstness, and personality traits. The cumulative evidence across these sources demonstrates that the research landscape is far broader than the claim suggests, with multiple studies consistently incorporating dimensions well beyond mere frequency counts and occupational roles, making the word 'mostly' a misleading oversimplification of a diverse and multidimensional body of scholarship.
The Opponent commits a scope-shift fallacy by treating evidence that some studies add discourse/agency dimensions as if it negates what the literature reviews explicitly say is the dominant pattern: multiple independent reviews characterize prior EFL textbook gender research as mostly quantitative, centered on frequency/visibility counts and occupational (and related domestic) role distributions (Source 12, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching; Source 10, ERIC/Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies; Source 7, e-FLT). Moreover, Source 15's framing (“previous studies often focused on numerical imbalances and occupational roles”) and Source 16's concession that alternative lenses are a “non-trivial strand” corroborate—rather than undermine—that frequency and occupational-role coding remains the primary focus in the bulk of earlier work.