Does women and men contribute to the fight for the swedish democratication in history text books aimed for the new curriculum Lgr 22?

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to research how feminine and masculine identities are constructed in history textbooks aimed for upper primary school students through different gender constructions. We have used Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis to analyse the chapters covering the democratic development in Sweden in four different textbooks from two different publishers. Two of them are aimed at the curriculum for the compulsory school Lgr 2011, and two for the curriculum for the compulsory school Lgr 2022. We want to investigate how history textbooks aimed for the 2022 curriculum present gender structures during Sweden’s democratic development 1870-1921, compared to textbooks meant for the previous curriculum. Our findings conclude that even though more women are mentioned in the later versions and have moved from picture descriptions into the actual text, they are still presented as addition to men and not as the protagonists of the historical events.