A
survey of five civics textbooks turns up a worrisome picture: only male Supreme
Court justices, Daphni Leef was never part of the social justice protest
movement and women are shown mostly poking through garbage
By Arie Kizel
and Alon Yerushalmi
Published in Haaretz Sep. 24, 2021
There has been
a growing understanding in recent years that public systems, including the
education system, need to be more sensitive to the issue of gender equality. A
study conducted at the University of Haifa reveals that civics textbooks in
Israel still have a long way to go. As part of the study, we examined the
representation of women in books that were supposed to promote an egalitarian
approach. The findings are worrisome.
Contrary to the
widespread public perception that Hebrew-language textbooks are politically
neutral and are intended to convey knowledge and consensual values, studies
conducted on textbooks since the end of World War I support the view that state
education systems have utilized them as a central tool to ensure uniformity in
learning at the national level. Indeed, despite the rising status of various
types of media, official textbooks continue to play a central role in teaching
and learning in Israel’s high schools, not least in connection with the
matriculation exams.
Studies on the
representation of women in textbooks conducted from the 1970s until the start
of the 2000s, both in Israel and around the world, have revealed a broad range
of attitudes: stereotypes, under-representation, diminishment and
discrimination. In Israeli textbooks for all subjects, as in the rest of the
world, the tendency over the years has arguably been to depict women in a
manner incompatible with the principle of equality and with their proper status
in society.
We examined how
women are represented in five civics textbooks for grades 10-12 in the Jewish
secular education system. The books chosen were approved for use by the
Education Ministry in recent years, and we examined the question
quantitatively, qualitatively and visually. Of the five textbooks, three are
earmarked for students who take the level 2 (the minimum out of a possible 5)
civics matriculation exam: “Government and Politics in Israel” (2011), “Israel:
A Jewish and Democratic State” (2012) and “Being Citizens in Israel in a Jewish
and Democratic State” (2016). Two of the books are meant for the level 5 exam
(a more difficult test taken only by those who choose, and weighted
accordingly): “The Challenge of Welfare in a Jewish State” (2011) and
“Religion, Society and State in Israel” (2006).
The civics
curriculum aims not only to impart knowledge about the state’s democratic
values, its structure and its governing systems, but also seeks to encourage
egalitarian and civil thinking. Civics – ezrahut (“citizenship”) in Hebrew – also
tries to push students to address the questions of political conflicts,
democratic dilemmas and such issues as equal rights or conflicts between
rights. The subject provides added value for young people at the end of their
high school studies: It aspires, at least declaratively, to help students
become active citizens, so they will possess a critical civic consciousness and
work to uphold democratic principles.
From this point
of departure, and after breaking down the data collected from the textbooks and
dividing the findings into the different relevant categories, we found three
central criteria for understanding the way that women are portrayed in these
textbooks. These are visibility: whether women are present at all, and in what
way; center vs. periphery: whether women are posited as being at the center of
activity, and in what way; and private vs. public: whether women are presented
as being active in the public sphere, or as orienting themselves toward the
private sphere.
The study
turned up significant disparities between the number of men and women who
appear in the textbooks. For example, a total of 138 male politicians are
mentioned in the five books, as compared with 11 female politicians. Male
presidents of the Supreme Court are mentioned 13 times, but a female president
only once. Nor is this only a local “problem”: The books mention 73 male
academics worldwide, but don’t refer to even a single female scholar from
outside of Israel.
The disparity
is not confined to the text. Very few photographs of women appear in the five
books, with not one photograph of a woman who is quoted in the book. In
contrast, there are numerous photographs of men from a range of fields who are
quoted or mentioned in the books: lawmakers, prime ministers, Nobel laureates,
judges and professors.
A case in point
can be found in one chapter that describes the functions of the government,
which includes a photograph from a cabinet meeting in the 1960s led by Prime
Minister Levi Eshkol, in which Golda Meir participated as a minister. However,
none of the books has a photograph of a cabinet session headed by Meir when she
was prime minister, or even of a cabinet meeting with other female ministers
present.
In one chapter
that deals with the role of the Supreme Court, for example, there is a
photograph of an extended panel of the court, consisting of five male justices.
But none of the books have a photograph from the Supreme Court with female
justices. Two of the books refer to the social justice protests of 2011 and
show photographs of the demonstrations. None of them mentions that two young
women, Daphni Leef and Stav Shaffir, were among the chief organizers of the
protest movement, nor do any photographs of them appear in the books.
Another aspect of visibility relates to which
women are depicted in photographs. Many of the images in the books present
women as needy: elderly and poor women, rummaging for food in garbage cans.
Others are depicted as being active in social-welfare realms: a hospital nurse;
Irit Rosenblum, head of the New Family organization; the journalist Orly
Vilnai. There is hardly any visual representation of women who are leaders,
hold senior positions or are doing groundbreaking work. Thus, although the late
legal scholar Prof. Ruth Gavison is much quoted in the books, her photograph
does not appear in any of them.
The five
textbooks are replete with men but mention only a small number of women in the
political, judicial, academic, economic and cultural realms.
In two areas,
however, the representation of women is actually higher than that of men. The
first is of women who are active on behalf of the needy and marginal groups,
those who do not operate at the center of the consensus. One of those
mentioned, for instance, is Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, an activist seeking to
empower the Arab local governments, who is now a Knesset member from Meretz;
and Vicki Knafo, a social activist from the town of Mitzpeh Ramon in the Negev.
The second
sphere where women’s representation is higher is the struggle for gender
equality, in which those cited include Alice Miller, who gained fame in the
1990s when she fought to be accepted to an air force pilots course, and Leah
Shakdiel, who successfully petitioned the High Court of Justice for the right
to serve on the religious council of the Negev town of Yeruham, where she
lives.
Maternal tasks
The examination
of gender representation in the five civics textbooks found that the public
space – law, politics, academia, culture and media – is male-dominated.
However, the private space, that of the family, is represented by women. This
is expressed visually by the depiction of women as needy, passive or doing
“maternal” work. This, for example, is how the wife of one of the prime
ministers is depicted – standing behind her husband – while other photographs
show women carrying children, a female caregiver in a kibbutz children’s house,
Mother Teresa, a hospital nurse, a female soldier-teacher and as noted, poor
women poking through garbage for food.
According to
declarations by the supervisors of the civics curriculum, its goal is to orient
students to constitute, as adults, a driving, active force in the social,
political, judicial and democracy-related realms. An analysis of the findings
shows that the covert messages in the textbooks orient the students to
understand that the public space is not intended for women, and that the center
of democratic activity is reserved for men. Women’s roles, as they emerge from
these textbooks, are mainly to be socially active, support the needy and fight
for the right to equality. Even more surprising is that three of the five books
were written by women, and that one book, written by a man, had a woman as an
adviser on gender. Do girls who encounter these textbooks receive encouragement
to be active, and to believe that they can break the glass ceiling and advance,
in the central spheres of life?
A 2017
Education Ministry document states that one of the goals of the civics
curriculum is to equip students with “binoculars, a map and a compass.” If this
content constitutes the binoculars, map and compass for the exploration of
civics, the education minister, Dr. Yifat Shasha-Biton, would do well to review
them thoroughly.
Another
recommendation for the education minister is to set in motion a broad
examination of textbooks in all subjects, from elementary school through high
school, in which additional findings, no less grave than those presented here,
will emerge about the representation of weak population groups and the
exclusion of important and central issues from the textbooks – reflecting
curricula in dire need of an overhaul.
Time and again,
the occupation with education, both before the coronavirus pandemic and in its
wake, mistakenly focuses largely on organizational matters – the transfer of
power, the number of children per class, technology – and consistently misses
the crucial need to look at pedagogy and the content of the education. It’s not
only the minister who should have a look at the textbooks, but parents too, to
discover how the world is presented to their children. Don’t make light of this
presentation. It shapes their perception of reality for the long term, and it
needs to be revised.
Prof. Arie
Kizel is a senior researcher at Faculty of Education at the University of
Haifa. He is also the president of The International Council of Philosophical
Inquiry with Children. Alon Yerushalmi is a research student at the University
of Haifa and a school principal in Hadera.
