Societies are surrounded by unaware attitudes and views about what is masculine and what is feminine and this can contribute to people being raced differently. Boys and girls are shaped to think and act in different ways from an early age because of their gender. According to the curriculum in the Swedish school system, the school has an important task to prevent such perceptions young people have about sex and gender. Reading books are still a central source where students gather information in the Swedish school. Therefore, I find it interesting to examine how gender is produced in three Swedish reading books from three different periods (1950s, 1970s and 2000s) to see what similarities and differences there are between the texts and the study has been based on three questions:

• How are men/boys and women/girls described in the reading books based on their characteristics, interests and pursuits?
• How much space in the texts are represented by men/boys and by women/girls?
• What masculinities and femininities can be found in the texts and which ones are the most desirable?

I have used a text analysis in my research to analyse the three reading books and based my theory on that gender is a social construction. My results show that the three reading books produce male and female structures based on the fact that men and women, boys and girls are opposites and are kept apart by qualities, pursuits and interests. Notions of what is masculine and feminine are also reflected in the texts by constructions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity. Further constructions concerning gender in the reading books are that men and boys have more space than women and girls and also that the personalities of men and boys grow at the expense of women and girls.