Celebrating gender and neglecting history: The history of gender representation in Moroccan primary school textbooks for colonial period onwards (1912-2022)

This research focuses on the history of gender representation in Moroccan textbooks and manuals for primary school grades within a broad chronological period (from the colonial era 1912 to date).The present research main objective is to investigate how gender was represented in primary school textbooks at three points in time: the French and Spanish colonial period, the immediate postcolonial era, and the present day, in terms of the visual discourse including: visibility, traits, characteristics, activities, and professions. This study also aims to analyze and compare the way gender was represented in these school textbooks at different historical periods to provide a framework for understanding how primary school textbooks of colonial, post-colonial, and present-day have defined the status of women within Moroccan society. A further objective of this study is to examine the association between the discriminatory attitudes of the Moroccan current generation toward women, and the historical representation of women in school primers. A further objective is to document how Moroccan teachers perceive and cope with gender representation in primary school textbooks while they are teaching.