Entre discursos e invisibilidades: a representação feminina nos livros didáticos de matemática

Abstract

This research aims to analyze how women are represented in the mathematics textbooks for the 6th and 9th grades of elementary education approved by PNLD, based on the images, examples, and problem situations present in these materials. In order to achieve the main objective, we developed three specific objectives: To identify which gender conceptions are implicitly conveyed by the mathematics textbooks and how they manifest in the presented content; To analyze how the female figure is represented in images and activities proposed in the mathematics textbooks for the 6th and 9th grades of elementary education, identifying possible stereotypes and situations of invisibility; To investigate how the values, discourses, and ideologies conveyed by the mathematics textbooks influence the construction of perceptions about the social roles attributed to men and women. The main theorists who supported this research are Foucault (1988, 2008, 2014), Junqueira (2012), Scott (1995), Butler (2006), Louro (2001), Bourdieu (2002), Neto & Silva (2021), Casagrande (2005, 2006) and Godoy et al. (2020). The research approach is mixed (qualitative and quantitative), exploratory, bibliographic, and documentary. Data were collected through the analysis of textbooks for the 6th and 9th grades of Elementary Education. Initially, we conducted the analyses of the textbooks separately, then we made a comparison between the analyzed books. From the analyses, we noticed that the mathematics textbooks for the 6th and 9th grades from the collection Mathematics and Reality contribute to the reproduction of gender stereotypes and female invisibility, as they recurrently associate women with roles of fragility, care, passivity, and domestic activities. We also observed that in both analyzed books, the representation of women is inferior to that of men, reinforcing gender inequality.