The content of school textbooks significantly affects students’ attitudes towards themselves, other people and society. Especially ESL students since they are not only learning a new language but also receiving knowledge about the given culture and lingua-cultural identity. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore gender equality issues in the ESL classroom, grades 4-6. A mixed method approach is applied, combining textbook reviews of 3 different textbooks used by 4 ESL teachers in Swedish elementary schools. The focus of the textbook reviews will be to explore how gender is addressed in the different books and if gender biases occur. This will then be combined with data from semi-structured interviews conducted with the 4 ESL teachers who are using the books. This paper will investigate how teachers navigate around gender when teaching with the use of the books as well as what their opinions are on gender sensitivity and representation in the books. The findings are coded through a thematic analysis to discover differences and similarities between the textbook reviews and the interviews. The results show that gender equality work in Swedish school textbooks has come a long way, women are far more represented than before and many different cultural representations are visible, but not as far as including all the aspects of gender that are needed to meet the fundamental values of the curriculum. Gender biases such as stereotypes, permeate all the reviewed books and gender-expansive people, as well as their pronouns, are invisible. Moreover, the teachers' opinions did not correspond all the way with my findings since most teachers believed the books to be gender sensitive and representative which was not found to be the reality.