This thesis has the purpose that through a text analysis examine how four schoolbooks for high school treats the religions Judaism and Hinduism. The schoolbooks are from the years 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2009. The perspectives are from a religious viewing point, that means that the women are religious, Jewish feminists and Hindu feminists. The theories used are written by these women and are academic litterature. The questions are how are women represented in the schoolbooks, is the feminist critique present or are the two religions represented and described in an invariable way, and is the description of Judaism and Hinduism consistent with the curriculum?
The text analysis used in this examination means that reality is organized through and by the language used by the actors in that reality. This language builds up structures of power which have the role to uphold the structure of power. The researcher’s role is to highlight the stories that are produced in the text, and to show the alternatives that in this case questions the power.
The many feminist perspectives used in this thesis say that the stories of the religions are stories written by men and for men, they are patriarchal. They have up risen from the male authority and are used to suppress women in different ways. The Hindu feminists mean that it is not just the Hindu man, but it’s the white man, the colonizer that suppresses the lower caste man and women.
The study confirms in most parts the feminist’s theories, by showing that there are most writings of men. Jewish orthodox man and Hindu middleclass man. The schoolbook from 2009 is more multilateral and shows both women and men, but still in many ways the descriptions of the two genders is based on the relation and descriptions of the genders as men describe it.