Promotion of Gender Stereotypes through the English Curriculum

The corpus analysis was piloted to detect the gender stereotyped construction in Intermediate English Compulsory Textbooks of Pakistan. Fostering gender-biased material indelibly scars the thinking of the young impressionable learners, and they are demotivated by such stereotypes presented in the textbooks (Frank,F.W., & Treichler,P.A.1989). In order to gauge the prevalence of these biased constructions, formative indicators were researched from the literature reviewed. In addition, computer aided programs were employed for detecting and counting the indicators while manual analysis was undertaken for scrutinising and linguistically analysing the content. Numerous occurrences of the indicators depicting stereotypes were surfaced. Females were portrayed in stereotypical occupational roles and were confined to their homes. In comparison, males were predominantly engaged in more productive and higher status professions. The corpus analysis unearthed the propagation of blatant sexism through male hegemony compliant to the patriarchal set up prevalent in the region. To mitigate the perpetuation of deleterious typecasting ,reinvented gender positions need to be incorporated.