Professional Documents
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At The Primary Level 5 Million Children Are Out of School, Girls Taking Up 60% of The Proportion With More Girls Being Out of School in Rural Areas
At The Primary Level 5 Million Children Are Out of School, Girls Taking Up 60% of The Proportion With More Girls Being Out of School in Rural Areas
At The Primary Level 5 Million Children Are Out of School, Girls Taking Up 60% of The Proportion With More Girls Being Out of School in Rural Areas
discrimination at all levels against women to be mitigated and also calls for creating
conducive cultural and social environments which may help the female gender achieve
equality
However, in Pakistan girls especially in rural areas girls face discrimination in being able to
attain education
•At the primary level 5 million children are out of school, girls
taking up 60% of the proportion with more girls being out of
school in rural areas
Discrimination in attaining education
+son-preference in a patriarchal society where sons are seen as assets and an important
investment for a family’s future, whereas a daughter is seen as a liability – so money
invested in a son’s education
+domestic work – “reproductive duties” which need to be carried out by daughters, look
after the house and other siblings, help their mothers out in domestic work
+ It is also important to take into account that the Government of Pakistan itself fails to
provide a good supply of primary level schools, especially in rural areas, which further
impedes a girl’s ability to achieve an education
Another important point to be taken into account is that despite being a signatory to
CEDAW – the government has failed to remove gender stereotypes prevalent in public
school textbooks ==
In analyses of state-sponsored textbooks for the primary level across the provinces of
Pakistan in the last decade researchers found images and stories which portray girls and
women as ‘domestic’ ‘weak’ and primarily carrying out work within the household, whereas
men and boys are portrayed as working men or in historical leadership roles and ‘strong’.
Furthermore, the nationalist ideology of Islam is also found to be intertwined with gender,
whereby a good Muslim Pakistani woman is portrayed as one who covers herself, with
pictures of women who are wearing dupattas on their heads. In addition to that although
examples of Hazrat Ayesha or Khadija are employed, they are primarily done so to portray
their qualities as good Muslim sisters or wives.
In light of these findings the Aurat March in the next 5 years seeks to increase the number
of girls attaining education in rural areas primarily at the primary level:
- Plans to open more primary level schools in rural areas with phased launches in
widely populated communities in every province, in collaboration with NGOs like
Malala Fund, with a special focus on girls making schools closer to communities and
making them low-cost to overcome the poverty and liability dilemma.
- We further seek to host nation-wide awareness raising campaigns in rural areas to
engage parents in being open to educating their daughters, educating them on the
importance of their daughters’ education.
- Demand the Government of Pakistan to effectively implement Article 25-A of the
constitution which claims ‘ The State shall provide free and compulsory
education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such
manner as may be determined by law.” – in light of this article we
demand the government to increase its education budget with a
special focus on rural areas and primary-school girls
In the textbooks of PCTB, both men and women are confined to perform
certain tasks and to work in different spheres of life. The text at numerous
places discourages girls to explore and limits them to stereotypical roles.
When female characters appear in the textbooks, they are presented as
pious, helpless, domesticated, and tolerant figures espousing their
husbands. Moreover, the textbooks show female characters in stereotypical
gender roles, such as cleaning, cooking, raising children, washing dresses,
and taking the whole responsibility for domestic and household chores.
Furthermore, the representation of women in professional life is also
restricted to a limited number of roles such as nurses, doctors, and school
teachers primarily. There is a need to change the representation of women
in the textbook. They should be shown in a broad spectrum as engineers,
lawyers, pilots or fighters. This would shatter the preconceived idea of
gender identity for students and would help them understand the present
society more reasonably.
GenderRepresenationinSchooltextbooksofBalochistanPakistan.pdf
5-JabeenIlyas.pdf
Therefore, girls are either invisible, or passive and caring, while boys
are skilful, intellectually dominant, naughty and of an adventurous
spirit.
The data shows that in Urdu textbooks 60.2 per cent space is given to
male characters. Male specific stories and domination of male
personalities was profound in Urdu textbooks.
Table No. 2 presents the direction of the stories in the Urdu textbooks
of the Sindh Textbook Board. Data in the given table reveals that the
majority of the stories (59.1 per cent) are negative so far as gender
parity is concerned, 29.5 per cent are gender neutral, and only 11.4 per
cent are positively presented which indicates a general attitude of
gender discrimination among the authors of the stories and all those
involved in approving them for publication in children’s textbooks.
The melding of religious and national identities is also evident in the construction of the Pakistani nation.
Pakistan was created on the discourse of ‘two-nation theory’ which constructed Indian Muslims as a
homogenous nation and in bipolar opposition to Hindus. Pakistani nationalism, unlike Western nationalism, was
derived from religion. Indian Muslims were, as they still are, heterogeneous
After independence in 1947, Pakistani nation-building required the forging of unity among a wide variety of
ethnic and linguistic groups whose only common thread was Islam. Islam has therefore been widely
promulgated as a source of legitimacy and coherence for the Pakistani state.
The gendered dimension of Pakistani national and religious identities is evident in the debate around the tenets
of ‘Islam’ and its implications for appropriate behaviour of ‘women’ in the public discourse on Pakistani
citizenship and national identity, particularly with the Islamisation policies of General Zia-ul- Haq in the 1980s
which legislated that Islam was to provide the definitive key to an acceptable identity for women in Pakistan.
The regulation and control of women’s roles and conduct also serves to construct Pakistan as a nation distinct
from its predominantly Hindu neighbour, India, so that Pakistani women’s identity by being Islamic is
simultaneously oppositional in both religious and national terms to that of Indian women (ibid). Given that
Pakistani identity is essentially constructed through the use of Islamic idioms (which sometimes draw on the
Quran and in other instances of various Hadiths), the raising of Western notions of gender and directives of
gender equality by women, both Pakistani and those outside of Pakistan, is regarded as threatening both the
foundations of Islam and Pakistan.
In the context of nation formation, scholars of nationalism see state-sponsored education and in particular state
controlled curricula as central to the promotion of national identity and the creation of internal homogeneity
(Gellner, 1983; Smith 1991). The curriculum is an important vehicle for both the transmission and
transformation of national identity with its integral gender norms and relations.
Pakistan uses a centralised national curriculum developed by the Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of
Education. All four provinces have their own school educational boards, which are autonomous bodies set up by
provincial governments, and are responsible for the production of textbooks within their jurisdictions.
The Curriculum Wing reviews all textbooks and reserves the rights to amend/delete/reject a part or whole of the
textbooks. Because of such tight control, the contents of textbooks are more or less the same in the four
provinces.
The current National Education Policy declares that ‘the ideology of Islam forms the genesis of the State of
Pakistan. The country cannot survive and advance without placing the entire system of education on sound
Islamic foundations’
The curricular texts, thus, overwhelmingly associate Islam with Pakistani identity.
The female icons mentioned in the Social Studies textbooks are Hazrat Khadija and Hazrat Fatima and in the
Urdu textbook are Hazrat Khadija, Ume Farwa and Hazrat Khola. The first icon of Hazrat Khadija remains the
primary source for identification and emulation for the female students. Her virtues as a dutiful wife and a good
mother are emphasised. She is portrayed as having initiative and agency before her marriage to the Prophet.
Upon marrying him, this ‘successful trade woman’ whose ‘trade caravan was so huge that all the trade caravans
of Quresh put together could not match hers’ (Urdu textbook, 79) entrusts ‘the Prophet with her wealth’ and gets
‘herself busy in domestic chores’
Hazrat Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, is also praised as an obedient wife and good mother. Ume Farwa is
introduced very briefly as a righteous and knowledgeable woman while discussing Imam Jaffer, her son. Hazrat
Khola, sister of Hazrat Zarar (a Muslim warrior), is the only anomaly to this established pattern. She is glorified
for her valour and warrior virtues but even the ‘brave mujahid who attacked the enemy fiercely all alone’ is
performing gender by veiling her face (Urdu textbook, 129). She establishes the moral and dress code for
women in the outside domain.
The selected admirable qualities in women contrast starkly with the multiple ways in which male icons are
represented and admired in the texts. With few exceptions, the textbooks use conflict, military heroism and
religious leadership as the central themes in the selection and portrayal of male national icons: 64.7% of male
heroes described in the Social Studies textbook and 41.6% portrayed in the Urdu textbooks are praised for their
engagement in conflict or martyrdom or mobilising Muslims to fight against their non- Muslim enemies. From
the Social Studies textbook, these heroes include:
The next largest category of heroes includes Muslim political leaders. All these heroes are praised for portraying
Muslims as a nation distinct from Hindus and include Syed Ahmad Khan, Iqbal and Jinnah (Social Studies
textbook), Maulvi Fazlul Haq and Jinnah (Urdu textbook). Upholders of Islam and religious ideals constitute
another category of male heroes. The Social Studies textbook discusses the Prophet in relation to Hazrat Khadija
and Hazrat Fatima who are the main characters in the text, albeit in subordinate roles. The Urdu textbook
portrays the Prophet as conqueror of not only Mecca but also the hearts of the inhabitants of Mecca and praises
Hazrat Usman for spending his wealth on the well-being of Muslims and on a Muslim army.
Dress codes
Since dress codes are one of the many resources that people use to signal association to a ‘gender’ or ‘nation’,
they are employed in the textbooks for constructing the ‘ideal’ Pakistani woman. All graphic representations of
Pakistani women (26) and teenage girls (7) in the three textbooks show them wearing the national dress –
shalwar (baggy trousers), qameez (shirt) and dupatta (a long scarf) with their heads covered. The only two
illustrations in which a woman has not covered her head are that of a Japanese woman wearing a kimono in the
Urdu textbook (74, 76). This ‘appropriate’ and homogenised physical appearance of Pakistani women not only
draws boundaries between Pakistani men and women but also between Muslim and non-Muslim women and
strengthens the association of Pakistani identity with Islam. This ‘appropriate’ depiction of women constitutes
the ‘gaze’ which performs ‘the administrative functions of management, the policing functions of surveillance,
the economic functions of control and checking, the religious functions of encouraging obedience’ (Foucault
1977, 173–4). It serves to establish a ‘moral’ and religious code for women and denies them the freedom to
decide on their own appearance.
In addition, the textbooks portray a restricted representation of women by depicting them mostly as mothers and
engaged in familial activities. While the valorisation of motherhood is not a sign of women’s subjugation, their
total exclusion from all other roles and domains fixes the meaning of what it means to be a good
Muslim/Pakistani woman and renders any deviation from this meaning as abnormal or deviant. Conversely, the
meanings of being a boy/man are represented in multiple ways and varied positioning. They are depicted as
performing acts of heroism, bravery and courage and showing initiative and agency. A sexual division of labour
permeates the stories and lessons in the textbooks. The dominant representations of women’s domesticity are
put across not in ‘subtle and hidden codes’ but through consistent repetition that can be termed as ‘ideological
bombardment’ (
The textbooks reflect this association of space and gender relations by depicting women/girls either textually or
graphically in spaces that are traditionally or discursively feminine. ‘The meaning of space in which the female
subject and her subjectivity is ideally to be located’ is thus fixed, making it difficult to understand the female
subject outside that space (Naseem 2006, 459). Home is naturalised as a woman’s legitimate, ideological and
physical space:
Students across the schools condemned women who violated the social norm of observing purdah (women
seclusion/veiling). Some girls from both localities said they felt proud as a Pakistani because they and their
mothers observed purdah and wore chador (a big shawl used for Purdah). The rural girls ruled out any
possibility of them not observing purdah: ‘It is our duty to protect us and our family’s honour’. All Muslim
urban girls too said that purdah was good and most of them said they would observe it even if allowed not to
because ‘If we don’t observe it, men will look at us’. The non- Muslim girl told the rest of the girls, ‘If you have
modesty in your eyes, you don’t need any purdah’.