Equality is currently one of the most debated aspects of the curriculum and the revisions of curricular documents and the educational strategies of all four analysed countries formulates gender and gender equality as an important issue to address (Ministerstvo školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy, 2020; Higher education authority, 2017; Ministry of Education and Research, 2021; Swedish government, 2018). It is also one of the key issue within strategies and policies produces by the European union concerning education and gender equality.

This study focuses on the topic of gender and gender equality in the curriculum of four countries whose curricular documents have recently been revised, or are in the process of revision, and which are characterized by diametrically different social discourse and level of gender equality (as indicated in Gender Equality Index conducted by the European Institute of Gender Equality) - Sweden, Ireland, Estonia and the Czech Republic (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2023). The study analyses and then compares the national curricular documents of all four countries, maps how and where the topic of gender and gender equality, as well as gender principles, are present and how they are thematized.

The aim of this study is to analyse various curricular documents from countries that score across the Gender equality index (both in overall results an withing the area of knowledge) from best to worst, to map if and how each curricular document integrate, thematize and conceptualize the topic of gender and gender equality. By studying national curricular documents and the ways in which gender and the principles of gender equality are integrated into these documents we can identify the examples of good practices, which can be inspiring during the process of curriculum revisions. Combining the results from various curricular documents will help create an analytical scheme, a categorical system that will be used as a tool to analyse curricular documents and to integrate different aspects of gender into curriculum.

Science provides reliable knowledge about the empirical world that is reproduced (also) in the school environment. It is therefore absolutely crucial that it includes the gender dimension and perspective (Harding, 2016) and the principles of gender equality.

Curricular documents are created different levels, this study analyses curriculum documents at the state (national) level (Dvořák, 2012).Gender and gender equality topics can be presented in the school environment within the intended curriculum as expressed in the official state curriculum documents (Dvořák, 2012). The study follows the aspects of feminist pedagogy and the notion that knowledge is a social construct. According to Lawton (1975), curriculum is a selection from culture and society and it is not possible for everything to appear here. Whether the issue of gender will be included in this selection depends on the approach of a particular society or culture to this topic (Elwood, 2016).

Mainstreaming gender equality into education within the European Union is one of the focuses of EU policies as we see that inequalities (in this case gender inequalities) are persistent in education in EU countries, although to a different level in each country (Driel, Donlevy & Melstveit Roseme, 2023). The focus of many studies dealing with the issue of gender (in)equalities in the education content is on textbooks and teaching materials  with only few of them analysing the curricular documents.

This study employs a qualitative research design, specifically a multiple case study approach (Hunziker & Blankenagel, 2021), to analyse and compare national curricular documents for primary and lower secondary schools in Sweden, Ireland, Estonia, and Czechia. The data were chosen based on the criteria of availability, language (the curricular documents had to be available in an official English translation) and most importantly based on the results of Gender Equality Index (countries scoring across the index from best to worst scores). The analysed data are the official curriculum documents from each of the four countries – the Czech Framework Educational Program for Primary Education, Irish The Primary School Curriculum, Framework for Junior Cycle, Swedish Curriculum for the Compulsory School, Preschool Class and School-age Educare, and Estonian National Curricula for Basic Schools. The analysis methods used in this study are content analysis and critical discourse analysis. Content analysis allows for the systematic examination of the content of the curriculum documents (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), while critical discourse analysis provides a deeper understanding of the social and cultural contexts that shape the representation of gender in these documents (Rogers, 2008). To facilitate the analysis, the documents were coded in the programme atlas.ti. Coding involves assigning labels to sections of the text to identify themes and patterns (Belotto, 2018). This process enables the systematic and objective analysis of the curriculum documents and aids in the comparison across different national contexts (Elliott, 2018). The methodology involves two main stages of analysis. First, each set of curriculum documents is analysed separately from the perspective of the conceptualization of gender equality. This involves examining the processing of the topics of gender and gender equality, the explicit naming of this topic, and the principles of gender equality. The aim is to identify where these criteria appear in the curriculum documents, where they are absent, and where they are not explicitly named but are implicitly present. Following the individual analysis, the curriculum documents are then compared with each other. This comparative analysis allows for a broader understanding of how gender equality is conceptualized and represented in different national contexts. This methodology provides a robust framework for examining and comparing the representation of gender equality in national curricular documents. It offers valuable insights into the similarities and differences in how gender equality is conceptualized and represented in different national educational contexts.

The results of the document comparison show a different concept of gender equality as well as a different direction of educational goals, which in all three countries is in line with the social discourse. The comparison offers the opportunity to describe the processing of gender equality topics, to identify places where there is room for the inclusion of gender equality and principles that can be incorporated into curriculum documents. The open approach of the Swedish curriculum is different from the Czech and Irish approaches. By comparing the three curriculum documents, we can analyse each curriculum again and outline the possibilities of conceptualizing gender equality. The level of integration and conceptualization of the topics of gender and gender equality is vastly different across the four documents. While Sweden has incorporated gender equality into curricular documents not only as a topic but also within the goals of education and the school environment, the Czech and Irish curriculum documents focus more generally on equality and it´s various aspects. Even the goals in these curricular documents relate primarily to equality in general. The Estonian curriculum contains less mentions of gender or gender equality than the Irish documents, but covers many aspects of gender dimension. The comparison of the documents offers an optics through which a country can view their national curricular documents, identify room for integration of gender and gender equality and possibly even get inspired during the process of revision of the curricular documents.

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