The Representation of Gender Equality for the Tenth Grade Senior High School Students

Abstract

Gender equality does not mean that women and men become the same. But their opportunities, responsibilities, and rights not depend on whether they are born male or female. However the practice of gender inequality still exist in Indonesia. According to the Global Gender Gap Report(2014), on average in the educational aspect Indonesian women are better educated than men, but men’s labor participation in Indonesia is higher than women. They also reported that almost in all aspects women are not better than men. This research analyzed the representation of gender equality in the ELT textbook fot the tenth grade students focusing on visuals and verbal texts. Visuals that are portrayed in ELT textbooks can give students a real view of the environment, places, and people around them (Mendoza & Reese, 2001; Brown & Habegger-Conti, 2017). While dialogues contain speech roles between characters which express roles and attitudes as well as an exchange of the message (Meiranti, 2011). There were some steps to analyze the representation of gender equality in the textbook based on Fairclough’s (1995) framework those are description, interpretation, and explanation. Moreover, to classify the gender equality from both visuals and nonverbal texts this study used three aspects from UN Women (2001) which were opportunities, responsibilities, and rights. This study found that inside ELT Textbook “Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA/SMAK/MAK Kelas X”provides some gender equality. Among three aspects of gender equality based on UN Women opportuties and responsibilities were depicted in the textbook. There was none of pictures and dialogues showed the rights aspect. The findings also revealed both in verbal and nonverbal texts the gender equality was not equally represented. The gender equality in the textbook appeared five times out of eleven pictures in visual artifacts and once out of four in verbal texts.