The study was designed to examine the portrayal of female and male sexes inrnprimary school textbooks of Amhara Region (Region three) and to identify if the contentsrnand illustrations of the newly developed textbooks have gender biased (sex -stereotyped)rnmessages.rnTo conduct the research, content analysis was used The analysis was done on 42rntextbooks for 13 subjects on topics, language, activites, biograpies and characters,rnoccupations and examples. Of the 42 textbooks, 50 percent of each textbook chaptersrnwere selected for analysis by using random sampling technique. On the basis ofrncategories frequency counts were made and the frequency counts were changed into ,rnpercentages. Chi-square (x) statistical test was computed to see if there is significantrndifference between male and female sex portrayal.rnThe general result of the study revealed that out of the total 42 textbooks analysedrn26 textbooks were found gender biased Among these only one was female biased and thernother 25 were male biased The rest, 16 texts were found fairly gender balanced Thernproblem was most serious in social studies texts of grade 7 and 5. The cumulative resultrnindicated that women/girls were depicted only 23 percent while men/boys 77 percent. Inrnthe activiles and occupations male and female sexes were depicted stereotypically. Nornsex demeaning messages were transmitted and pictures of men/boys and women/girlsrnwere fairly balanced English subjecl texIs of all grade levels were found fairly balanced.