There is little contention that gender equity continues to be a challenge in many societies across the Southern African region. Dominant discourses that perpetuate inequality are often reflected in school materials such as textbooks, which have the potential to socialise girls and boys into particular gender performances. The aim of the study being reported on was to examine representations of gender in a sample of Business Studies school textbooks. The textbooks were selected from four Southern African countries: Swaziland, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The study employed a sociolinguistic analytical framework, namely critical discourse analysis and was guided by the tenets of feminist poststructuralism in the analysis of this phenomenon. The findings of the study reveal superficial content changes in the texts under study. Gendered ideologies continue to prevail in a remarkably overt fashion. One key finding was at a semantic level, namely the mention of the male pronoun first in sentences and conversation and not the female pronoun, having the likely effect of endorsing the principle of the ‘firstness’ and superiority of the masculine. In the order of two words paired for sex such as ‘Mr and Mrs’, ‘brother and sister’ and ‘husband and wife’, the masculine word came first. This automatic ordering is likely to reinforce the second-place status of women. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of these findings for pedagogy and the textbook publishing industry. The findings also have the potential to ignite debate, as it relates to re-imagining the programmatic curriculum (school textbooks) as a contested genre.

中文翻译：

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男性作为自动订购的“第一性”：南非商业研究学校教科书中的性别话语

几乎没有争议，在整个南部非洲地区的许多社会中，性别平等仍然是一个挑战。导致不平等长期存在的占主导地位的话语通常反映在诸如教科书之类的学校教材中，这有可能使男孩和女孩社交化为特定的性别表现。报告该研究的目的是在商业研究学校教科书样本中检查性别的代表。这些教科书选自四个南部非洲国家：斯威士兰，莱索托，津巴布韦和南非。该研究采用了社会语言分析框架，即批判性话语分析，并以女权主义后结构主义的宗旨为指导对这一现象进行了分析。该研究的发现揭示了所研究文本中表面内容的变化。性别意识形态继续以明显的方式盛行。一个关键的发现是在语义层面上的，即在句子和对话中首先提到男性代词而不是女性代词，这可能会支持男性的“第一性”和优越性原则。按性别配对的两个单词（例如“夫妻”，“兄弟姐妹”和“丈夫和妻子”）的顺序是男性。这种自动命令可能会增强女性的第二地位。本文最后讨论了这些发现对教学法和教科书出版业的影响。这些发现也有可能引发争论，因为它与将课程大纲（学校教科书）重新构想成一种有争议的体裁有关。