Is My Physics Textbook Sexist?

This paper is intended to foster conversations about stereotypes, prejudice, and our day-to-day work in the classroom. The focus is on sexism and how it can affect our teaching, particularly looking at physics textbooks. Maybe you are already familiar with debates around feminist movements, gender studies, patriarchy, performance, and all of those issues common to people like me, whose research work considers the intersections of gender, sexuality, and physics teaching. I (first author) am a professor in a physics department; because of my work with pre- and in-service physics teacher education, I frequent several high schools. In my experience, many physics teachers (and other teachers too!) have a hard time seeing how these gender discussions connect to their classroom; part of my work is to help them identify these connections. This paper was motivated by my failure to detect broader gender connections in physics textbooks.