Van Nieuwenhuyse, K.;
Sipos, B.;
Depickere, L.;
Lengyel, N.;
(2025)
Representations of women and their role within society in the past in Flemish and Hungarian history textbooks.
History Education Research Journal
, 22
(1)
, Article 17. 10.14324/HERJ.22.1.17.
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Abstract
This article analyses the historical representations of women, as individuals and as groups, in the past (from 1750 to the present) in currently (2023) used secondary school history textbooks in Hungary and Flanders. This international comparative perspective has been chosen as both countries, at least partly, share a common history and present. At the same time, there are also differences to be discerned, such as the liberal tradition versus post-socialism in society at large. Two main research questions guide the analysis. The first one is how women in the past are represented in chapters about the Hungarian and (pre-)Belgian national past, and about the past in general, since 1750. Specific attention is paid to the representation of the three consecutive waves of feminism. The second research question concerns the presence or absence of underlying patterns in the history textbook accounts with regard to the representation of women’s position and role in the past. For instance, do textbooks take a gender perspective, or rather give the impression of having added some women’s history to an existing storyline? The analysis is based on current history textbooks being used in Grades 10, 11 and 12 of secondary school history education. The analysis draws mostly on a qualitative content analysis. Results show similarities (for example, few mentions of women as individuals and as groups; close alliance to popular historical culture, not to academic historiography) as well as differences (in terms of recognising the importance of including women in textbook accounts of the past, and underlying storylines).
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Representations of women and their role within society in the past in Flemish and Hungarian history textbooks |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/HERJ.22.1.17 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/HERJ.22.1.17 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025, Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse, Balázs Sipos, Lies Depickere and Nóra Lengyel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Hungary, Flanders, history education, social representations, women’s history, gender history, feminist waves, history textbook research |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10214176 |
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