Engaging with Feminist Poststructuralism to Inform Gender Equity Practice in Early Childhood Classrooms in Pakistan

Abstract

This chapter focuses on teachers’ engagement with feminist poststruc- turalist theory to inform gender equity practice in early childhood classrooms in Pakistan. While feminism as a construct has received much criticism in the context of Pakistan as being a Western construct and therefore unsuited to the needs of Pakistani society and classrooms; this chapter shows that when teachers are pro- vided an opportunity to use this framework to inform gender practice it opens possibilities for challenging discursive practices in early childhood classrooms in Pakistan. This chapter provides examples of shifts in teacher’s classroom practices and the construction of new understandings of gender. Dominant discourses cir- culating in Pakistani early childhood classrooms view gender as essentialist and biological sex as the prerequisite and thus dictate how gender is performed. In addition, limited access to performances of gender in the Pakistani society and early childhood classrooms, leave children with ingrained ways of being that are fixed and rigid. Merely changing storylines or offering alternatives can be a risky busi- ness especially if it does not take into account what exists at the core, in the case of Pakistan, the religious discourses circulating which dictate what is (im)moral and which speak into existence only certain ways of being. By working with feminist poststructuralism, this chapter shows how teachers participating in action research in early childhood classrooms in Karachi, Pakistan were able to disrupt essentialist discourses. Engaging in feminist poststructuralism helped teachers raise questions regarding the possibilities of gender equity work and what could be construed as permissible and appropriate in a patriarchal context such as Pakistan.