the present study set out to critically explore the discourse of two series of ELT textbooks, namely, prospect 3 and vision 1 as well as interchange intro and interchange 1 in terms of how male and female are represented with regard to the ideological patterns behind this representation. to achieve this aim, a number of factors, including 1)frequency of male and female characters 2) the frequency of male and female genders in terms of photographical presentations, 3) the ration of ownership by male and femal genders; 4) the types of jobs and activities held by male and female genders, 5) semantic roles devoted to both genders; 6) the ration of masculine generic construction; 7) the titles of both genders were described, interpreted and explained in light of the Fairclough's (2001) three dimensional model. the findings revealed that both series of textbooks suffer from gender bias in favour of male gender, but this unbalanced status in gender representation existed to different degrees. in reality, the iranian ELT textbooks are more contaminated with this kind of bias while interchange intro and interchange 1 have made improvements in this regard. it was suggested that the gender inequality observed in the iranian ELT textbooks rooted in iranian culture while the author of interchange intro and interchange 1 tried to reflect the equality between male and female genders in the modern world.
