Abstract:

With the rise of gender awareness around the globe, there is a growing emphasis on enhancing gender equality awareness, especially in the field of education. Textbooks are the chief and critical resources in reflecting a country’s mainstream educational policy and ideology intended to pass on to younger generations. Taiwan and South Korea share Confucian cultural awareness and have many similarities in the historical context of national development. Grounded on this, the present study explored the domestic high school history textbooks in Taiwan (L and S version) and South Korea (M and B version). Content analysis method was applied to examine what content gender ideology involves, and whether it encompassed prejudiced gender ideology, and then discussed it from cross-cultural awareness and understanding perspectives.

The results are summarized as follows:
1. The proportion of both genders in textbooks: The proportion of male and male traditional roles in the textbooks in the two countries is more than that of female.
2. The proportion of "(literal) text" for both genders in textbooks: The proportion of "text" mentioning female (i.e. female’s name or appellation) in Korean history textbooks is higher than that in Taiwanese history textbooks.
3. The proportion of both genders’ "pictures" in textbooks: The proportion of female "pictures" in Taiwanese history textbooks is higher than that in Korean history textbooks.
4. Female's diverse social roles: Taiwanese history textbooks show more positive attitudes in mentioning females and their diverse social roles than Korean history textbooks do, especially in the modern history section.
5. The roles of females in the colonial period: Taiwanese history textbooks do not emphasize the oppression imposed on Taiwanese females during the Japanese occupation period, while Korean history textbooks strongly emphasize and criticize the Japanese colonial authorities’ oppression at that time.
6. The issue of gender diversity in modern times: Taiwanese history textbooks mention same-sex marriage and homosexual literature in a positive manner, while Korean textbooks do not.

Finally, based on the findings above, recommendations for the challenges and priorities of gender equality education in textbooks are given.

Keywords:

Gender equality education, gender ideology, cross-cultural perspectives, history textbooks, Taiwan, Korea.