A Critical Discourse Analysis on Gender Bias Depicted from Indonesian ELT Textbook for Junior High School

Abstract

This study explores gender bias in three English language textbooks for grades VII to IX, focusing on the representation of gender in images, figures, and character names. The analysis reveals that all three textbooks exhibit gender bias to varying degrees. In the grade VII textbook, males are more frequently depicted in images (55%) compared to females (45%), while females appear more frequently in character names (52%) than males (41%). The grade VIII textbook shows a slight male predominance in images (52% vs. 48% for females), but character names are balanced between the genders (50% each). In the grade IX textbook, females dominate the images (52% vs. 48% for males), while males are more prevalent in character names (59% vs. 41% for females). Gender bias is further explored using specific criteria proposed by Solomon (1988) and revealed imbalance proportion between male and female.  From the results of critical discourse analysis, the invisibility criteria were found in 8 cases, gender stereotyping 4 cases, imbalance and selectivity 5 cases, while fragmentation and linguistic bias are absent across the textbooks. The criterion of unreality appears in 5 cases. These findings show that although some gender representations are balanced, bias still exists, emphasizing the need for fairer gender portrayals in educational materials.