Gender Equity Assessment: Grade Three and Four students’ Amharic Textbooks in Focus

Abstract

 This study examines what gender equity looks like in third and fourth grade Amharic language textbooks. For this purpose, the two grade textbooks were selected in a purposeful manner. Data were collected from documents. The collected data was also analyzed by chi -square, frequency count, ratio and percentage. From the analysis obtained, the frequency of female representation by name is 66(54.09%) and the frequency of male representation is 56 (45.9%). Chi -square test also showed that p>0.05. The significance value was .157. It shows that there is no significant difference between the sexes. The frequency ratio of male to female is 1 to 1.12. In this sense, there is no significant difference in gender frequency. When the social role of the two sexes is seen. The books do not feature women in the main social roles. Among the main roles that females participated were circumcision, buying bread, selling bread, taking care of children, giving medical advice, asking for rights, and taking care of the sick. Playing football, being a patient carrier, being a athletics supporter, constructing home, working as a policeman and a driver are mostly given to men. From this point of view, it can be said that there is a problem of equity in social role representation. When the representations presented without repetition are seen, however, men are represented with relatively better objects than females. Therefore, the future curriculum developers should improve on the weaknesses while maintaining the strengths in the books they will produce.