Historiemedvetande och jämställdhetstankar hos svenska ungdomar

Abstract

Abstract: Because Swedish teenagers bring with them a cultural background that affects their perception of history, this, in turn, affects how they understand and receive the history taught in school. For some decades now, the students´ historical consciousness should be the starting point to their history education in compulsory school in Sweden, that is, their understanding of their own lives in a temporal perspective. Consequently, educators should be interested in how the students understand societal issues through time, as this influences how they will understand history. This study explores the students’ understanding of gender equality in a temporal perspective. As the method is quantitative, the results must therefore be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless, there are some interesting results that should be taken into account before teaching gender equality in history. The girls understand the theme as mostly a conflict in the past, while the boys worry about the future. Moreover, the girls more easily imagine perspectives where women are the victims, while the boys more easily understand perspectives where men are the victims. These results call for a nuanced history teaching to reach both boys and girls.