Textbooks play an important role in Swedish primary school education. For that reason it is important to investigate how these textbooks affect teaching, learning, and pupils perspectives on their future employment opportunities. The aim of this study is to investigate how gender, ethnicity and class are portrayed in textbooks that are used in primary school teaching in social studies (grades 1–3). This study uses a qualitative research method and analyses both texts and images of two commonly used textbooks in these grades. The study uses an intersectional theoretical framework, which focuses on the categories gender, class, and ethnicity. The questions focused in the study are the following:

1)  How do the categorizations categories ethnicity, class and gender interact in the texts and images in the textbooks?

2) Are the different sexes and characters with different ethnic groups represented with occupation/education to the same extent in the texts and images in the textbooks?

3) What characteristics and social classes are associated with the different sexes in conjunction with and what social classes are associated with different ethnic groups in conjunction with occupation/education in the texts and images?

The results show that female and male characteristics are kept apart in the textbooks, and that women and men generally are associated with traditional female and male-dominated professions and professions that are described by female or male characteristics. The result also reveals a class hierarchization between the sexes. Characters with a foreign background are underrepresented, especially women. The result however shows an equal distribution of men and women in the textbooks.