"Would you take a pay cut? We're looking for Caucasians". How whiteness can affect White, Black and Muslim female 'native-speaker' English language teachers.

This article sets out investigate the interrelationships between native speakerism, Whiteness, ethnicity and appearance in the TESOL context. It explores whether Whiteness plays a part in TESOL teachers' recruitment and job opportunities when employers are seeking to employ 'native speakers'. It draws its data from focus group interview data with seven female TESOL teachers. Two were White, three were Black and two were White Muslims who wear the hijab. The findings show that when English language teaching job advertisements call for 'native speaker' teachers, recruiters are-consciously or unconsciously-looking for White teachers from ex-colonising countries such as the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand whom they perceive as representing Whiteness. In this sense, Whiteness is inextricably linked to the concepts of the 'native speaker' and 'native speakerism' in English language teaching. The study concludes that native speakerism acts a veiled façade for Whiteness and consequently that White TESOL native speaker teachers are privileged over their Black and Muslim counterparts in a number of areas. These include: pay, objectification, acknowledgement of their professional achievements and visibility in advertising materials aimed at prospective students and their parents. The paper concludes with a call to confront such often-unacknowledged bias in favour of Whiteness by establishing open conversations with recruiters, parents, students and others involved in the TESOL field. It also recommends that countries should follow the European Union's lead and ban any language teaching job criteria that state a 'native speaker' requirement.

Women in Saudi secondary school EFL textbooks: a critical study of women's empowerment as enshrined in the Saudi Vision 2030.

Since the launch of the Saudi Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has undergone significant economic and social reforms in order to move away from the country's reliance on oil and toward a more diverse and sustainable economy. One of the important chapters in this endeavour is the empowerment of Saudi women whereby they are to be given opportunities equal to men. Against this new paradigm, this study investigates whether Vision 2030's transformative efforts surrounding women's empowerment are reflected in the country's EFL textbooks, or whether the traditional representation of Saudi women has remained unchanged. The analytical focal point is the pictorial representation of Saudi women in six textbooks which form part of the Mega Goal series, and which are used to teach English in Saudi secondary schools. The analysis examined the representations of females from three different angles: the percentage of appearances in the textbooks from the total human pictorials; the social roles and occupations depicted, and the activities that they are engaged in. Analysis along all three of these angles revealed that there is a remarkable imbalance between the depiction of men and women in these textbooks, in favour of men. The study concludes that the Mega Goal series' EFL textbooks fall short of providing a realistic representation of Saudi women and fails to include representative depictions of women who, like their male counterparts, have occupied senior roles and prestigious positions in the country. This conclusion points to the need to include such representation in EFL textbooks, so that the role of women as envisaged in Saudi's Vision 2030 complies with the Vision's determination to provide equal opportunities for both men and women.