This paper is based on empirical research on the share of women authors in Slovenian secondary school literature textbooks between 1850 and 2000. The highest share (about 15%) of women authors was achieved after the Second World War and in contemporary textbooks. However, this share occurred in only one of three competing books, one which offers a considerably larger selection of authors than that required by the curriculum. The research showed that the share of women authors depends on the scope of the approach: the fewer authors that are included, the smaller is the likelihood of women authors being represented. With a very strict selection of nationally representative authors, the female gender is not represented at all. The gender of the selector(s) may influence the inclusion of women authors, but not necessarily: a textbookʼs editor may be a woman, yet still fail to include a single woman author. A comparison between textbooks and literary-historical selections shows that women authors in textbooks are less represented (due to limitations of the scope as determined by the included literary texts), and the selection criteria may also differ.