ANALYSIS OF GENDER ROLE MISCONCEPTION ON SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOKS IN PLATEAU STATE 1I. D. Abubakar, 2Agbo, Eunice Oada & 3Gana, Deborah Rekiya 1Department of Arts and Social Science Education, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria 2Department of Educational Foundations, Faculty of Education, University of Abuja 3Centre for Gender Security Studies and Youth Advancement, University of Abuja
ABSTRACT: Despite the laudable expectations from Social Studies, recent researches on its textbooks seem to suggest and present a dismal picture of women’s place in history. It has been observed that in most social studies literatures (textbooks) the roles of females were omitted while male were more visible which the thrust of this study is. The study looks at how the gender roles relate to the family, community and the country is represented in the social studies textbooks in Plateau state. The study used the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 21 (SPSS 21) in analysing the quantitative aspect of the data while one way ANOVA was used to establish whether there is or there is no significant difference exists in gender role misconception and stereotypes among teachers based on their years of teaching experience, location differences, educational qualifications and gender. At the end of the research, the study revealed that there is no significant difference in mean score for gender role misconception and stereotype of the teachers on the basis of their years of teaching experience and educational qualifications while there are significant differences in mean score for gender role misconception and stereotype of the teachers on the basis of their school location differences and gender affiliation. The result of the teachers based on teaching experience and educational qualifications was revealed to be 0.003 and 0.007 respectively which is less than the significant of 0.05 as established by the study while the teachers misconception based on school location differences and gender affiliation, the study revealed the mean score of 0.450 and 0.894 respectively which were more than 0.05 significance level of the study which implies that teacher’ years of teaching experience and educational qualifications do not have any effect on their views regarding gender roles misconceptions in the contents of primary school Social Studies textbooks. As a result of these findings, the following recommendations were given. The new concepts of masculinity and femininity should be allowed to encourage both females and males to freely develop their potentials and personalities; males should feel their masculine side in caring for their family members and sharing housework while females should be encouraged to strive for high social positions; there should be elimination of Confucian ideologies which downplay females as well as constructing females; and as the Nigerian society is changing, its natural law that set backward attitudes toward women should be discarded and replaced by progressive ones.
Key Words: Gender Role, Misconception
