The portrait of gender justice and injustice in the Islamic teaching textbook and Muhammadiyah teachers' responses

Abstract

The paper investigates the textbook on Islamic teaching officially published for Muhammadiyah Senior Secondary Schools. It examines whether the textbook promotes gender justice or injustice. In addition, how the teachers think about the gender discourse is also explored. The study seems important to carry out by taking account of whether the trend of gender discourses which has taken place for some decades in the public is substantially accommodated in the Muhammadiyah schools' curriculum. Moreover, the teachers' responses to the existing gender issues as included in the textbook may be crucial to shape since they are translators of the text offered. To clarify this issue, the paper uses content analysis of the textbook and analyses the result of interview with several Muhammadiyah senior secondary schools' teachers in Yogyakarta. The result of this study shows that even if the content of the official textbook generally emphasizes gender justice, in some cases, it promotes gender injustice and stereotypes. The explanation of men's social roles in the whole Muslims' history tends to be widely explored whereas that of the possibility of women's roles is paid less attention. On the other hand, in other parts of the textbook, there is an explanation of the importance of democratic attitudes for Muslims in the framework of societal relations. In the sense, the elaboration of the possibility of men and women to participate in the public is theologically explained. With regard to the teachers' responses, the writing indicates that they generally agree with the notion of the need for women and men to share and possibly contribute in the public as long as the women in particular do not deny their domestic roles. They seem trying to examine the content of the textbook ranging from rational up to theological considerations. To conclude, the textbook contains gender justice and injustice orientations which have been responded variously by the teachers.