“Would you like to dance with me, Miwa?”: gender roles and the EFL Text

This article is an evaluation of gender roles in the Planet Blue Japanese high school textbook. Using criteria built on biases found by Jane Sunderland, it evaluates the textbook on basis of exclusion, subordination and distortion, and degradation. On the whole, the textbook appears to have made significant improvement in these three criteria, especially in the presentation of career roles for woman. The roles of men and women in romantic relationships presented in the text, however, are still presented in stereotypical terms. The article presents these remaining biases as opportunities for EFL instructors to provoke discussions regarding gender roles in Japanese culture as well as English-speaking cultures