Abstract:

Social gender roles, differently from biological sex, refer to perceptions of society about the roles, responsibilities and features of women and men. Gender mainstreaming can be defined as equality between males and females in all aspects of social life –family life, work and politics. Republic of Turkey is a state party for international conventions such as Convention on the Rights of Children, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), European Convention on Human Rights. All these international conventions enjoin state parties to provide equality among all people in the society. Therefore, providing social gender equality among the society is under the responsibility of government. Turkish government attempted to provide gender mainstreaming among the society through legislative regulations. Unfortunately, both national and international reports and national research indicated that gender equality is not reached in society. It is known that perceptions of gender roles develop during early years of life in the family and education system. Therefore, national education system is also responsible to develop equal gender role perceptions among next generation. This can be done through providing educational materials that highlight gender mainstreaming. Although providing equal gender role perceptions is stated as a hidden aim of all educational materials provided by Ministery of National Education, previous studies about how educational materials stressed out social gender role equality found that examined educational materials are weak to focused on social gender role equality. Similarly, in this study Family Support and Education Guidebook Integrated with Early Childhood Education Program (OBADER), published in 2013, is examined to understand whether gender mainstreaming is encouraged through encouraging father involvement. It is found that OBADER is not able to stressed out father involvement in early childhood education, rather it supports traditional gender role perceptions and focus on mothers/mother child relationship through all examples, photographs and discouses used in the guidebook. It is suggested that there is a need to renew OBADER as a guidebook that focus specifically on father involvement as much as mother involvement.

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