“Edo, wash the pan for me, please”: A critical discourse analysis of gender-based social actor constructions in an Indonesian EFL textbook

Abstract

Textbooks not only function as a medium to transmit knowledge but also play their role as a transmitter of ideologies, values, beliefs, and cultures. However, scrutinizing the gender construction in ELT textbooks, notably in the Indonesian EFL setting, remains limited. This study aimed to investigate how gender was represented discursively in an Indonesian EFL textbook. The corpus of this study was selected chapters of a mandated Indonesian EFL textbook. The study used document analysis and applied van Leeuwen’s social actor framework to examine the representation of gender in the textbook Bahasa Inggris Think Globally Act Locally for Grade IX (Wachidah et al., 2018). The findings outlined that the textbook tends to glorify males as social actors through metaphorical praise, depict males as economically productive social actors, portray females as busy social actors, construct gendered characteristics discursively, and address males and females as proportional characters. Although males and females were represented equally, they were unfairly treated in some contexts. The textbook still prioritizes males as more dominant social actors than females. In other words, gender bias persists in the textbook. Designing equal gender representation in ELT textbooks remains crucial to help students raise their awareness of equal gender-based ELT materials in textbooks.