Female references in fifth grade textbooks: a comparative gender analysis between the LOMCE and the LOMLOE in Spanish Language and Literature and Foreign Language

Abstract

The scarce presence of female intellectual references, in general, and literary ones, in particular, in school textbooks at different educational levels has been documented by a diversity of authors (López-Navajas and Querol, 2014). The objective of this work is to compare its presence in fifth grade textbooks (2018-2022) for the subjects of Spanish Language and Literature, and Foreign Language, and to observe the possible similarities and divergences in relation to the different conceptualizations of each subject in the curriculum. In the case of Spanish Language and Literature, we have worked with textbooks from the publishers SM, Bromera and Santillana, while, in Foreign Language, we have analyzed textbooks from the publishers MacMillan, Richmond and OXford. In each of them we have contrasted: 1) the presence of male and female authors through texts, 2) the male and female presence in the content of these texts and the characters' roles and 3) the graphic representation of these categories. Thus, after a brief theoretical introduction on the relevance of the genealogy of female linguistic and literary knowledge, we present the results derived from the analysis of the aforementioned textbooks and we conclude with the advances found and the identified possibilities for improvement.