Images of Women in School Textbooks, 1880-1920.

An investigation of a sample of geography, physiology, and arithmetic textbooks used during the period 1880-1920 is described. The paper details the attitudes expressed in these books toward women in society: what they were expected to be, their status vis-a-vis the roles of men, the overlap between the roles of men and women. The paper also explores any possible correlations between (1) sex of author, and (2) sex of audience and the attitudes toward women expressed in the books. It suggests that American textbook writers during this period were slow to acknowledge the changes in society that affected the roles of women. (Author)