| Summary: | The aim of this thesis is to examine and analyze what discourses about women can be found in three Swedish textbooks in social studies, and to identify the different social roles that are being attributed to the woman in these textbooks. The theoretical and methodological background used is Discourse Theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Additional theory used is post strucutral feminism, intersectionality, and critical discourse theory as described by Norman Fairclough. Three questions are asked: Which subject positions are assigned to the women in the material examined? What discourse/s can be found in the textbooks? Do the results change over time? Five subject positions are identified: woman as mother and wife, the teenage girl, woman as a public actor, the vulnerable woman and the other woman. Hence – five different discourses are identified: the caring woman, the teenage girl, the active woman, the vulnerable woman and the other woman. The analysis shows that the discourse about the caring women is reproduced over time. Women are attributed characteristics such as caring whose primary focus is to attend to the needs of others. Particularly noticeable is the fact that the language does not rest solely on a heterosexual binary, but also on ethnocentric beliefs where the ‘other women’ is used to strengthen the community of the Western group – a group in which the other woman can never participate.
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