Feminine+girl/masculine+boy=traditional gender roles : a semiotic analysis of images in mathematics books for elementery school earlier years

This essay focuses on the pictures in mathematics books for elementary school. The purpose was to see if images in mathematics books for elementary school show traditional gender roles. The aim of the essay has been broken down into following research questions: Vilka färger förknippar de olika matematikböckerna till pojkar/män respektive flickor/kvinnor? How many times were girls/women and boys/men illustrated in the mathematics books? What behavior is associated with masculinity and femininity? Which colours are associated with boys/men and girls/women in the mathematics books? I used a semiotic image analysis method to study the pictures presented in the mathematics books. The theories in this essay were used to see how society makes girls become girls and boys become boys and in what ways the genders are portrayed in relation to each other. In addition, the theories include the question of whether a specific colour is given to a specific gender? The analysis evidently confirmed that the images in the mathematics books demonstrated traditional gender roles. There was evident proof that the behavior of both boys/men and girls/women showed distinct features of the traditional gender roles. However, boys/men were more likely to stay in their traditional gender roles in terms of the colours of their clothes than the girls/women did