The imagery of gender in Italian textbooks. Research into primary school books

In Italy, the theme of equality in textbooks has been accepted much later than in other European and international contexts, and studies and research dedicated to this subject area are still insufficient today. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Department for Equal Opportunities - in collaboration with the IEA (Italian Publishers Association) - promoted the Polite project (for equal opportunities in textbooks): a self-regulating European project for educational publishing, with the purpose of eliminating gender stereotype in teaching texts. This essay begins with a short review of studies carried out in Italy since the 1970s, with particular reference to studies of linguistic sexism introduced by Alma Sabatini in the mid-Eighties. This is followed by presentation of research focusing on samples of primary school reading books published in the early 2000s. The research makes combined use of quantitative and qualitative assessment methodology. The results demonstrates that the guidelines offered by the Polite project are still not being applied by publishers, and textbooks continue to project an image of femininity and masculinity which is profoundly sexist and anachronistic.