Language diversity and gender identity: a developing world investigation

Do different languages represent gender identity differently? Using content analysis, this paper investigates the association between language diversity and gender identity. Patterns associated with individual gender identity are substantially formed during childhood and adolescence and are related to the fact that school textbooks play a key role in the gender socialization process. This paper examines gender identity patterns representation in Iranian school textbooks. Iran's educational system and school textbooks use three languages: Farsi, Arabic and English. The paper highlights the differentials associated with gender representation in these diverse languages and provides an empirical basis for investigating the competing contributions of social context and language diversity