ABSTRACT

This exploratory qualitative study problematises how Pakistan’s public-school education shapes female identities, employing compulsory school textbooks. Drawing on Foucault’s Discourse Analysis and other selected notions, the study also analyses 12 teachers’ and 424 students’ perspectives on this. The findings highlight Pakistani females’ disproportionate and gendered stereotypical social representations in textbooks, which the teachers further reinforce through teaching/social practices in schools. Discursively constructed, most students identify with these and reproduce them when conceptualising an ideal Pakistani woman. The study also underlines how an education system, apparently promising equity and inclusiveness, can be incredibly exclusive, ‘guiding’ the country’s 50% female population to make homemaking their destiny. This education perpetrates social othering, encourages self-righteousness and privileges men over women. Social ramifications of this education entail exclusion and disempowerment of Pakistani women as a social category. This has serious implications for certain sustainable development goals SDGs, 2030, inter alia.

摘要

这项探索性定性研究提出了巴基斯坦公立学校教育如何利用义务教育课本塑造女性身份的问题。借鉴福柯的话语分析和其他选定的概念，该研究还分析了 12 名教师和 424 名学生对此的观点。研究结果强调了教科书中巴基斯坦女性不成比例的、性别刻板的社会表征，教师通过学校的教学/社会实践进一步强化了这种表征。通过话语构建，大多数学生在概念化理想的巴基斯坦女性时认同这些并复制它们。该研究还强调，表面上承诺公平和包容的教育体系可能具有令人难以置信的排他性，“引导”该国 50% 的女性将家庭作为自己的命运。这种教育助长了社会他人，鼓励自以为是，并赋予男性高于女性的特权。这种教育的社会影响导致巴基斯坦妇女作为一个社会类别被排斥和剥夺权力。这对某些可持续发展目标 SDGs, 2030,除其他外。