Educational parlance of equity and inclusivity and students’ gendered national identity constructions in public schools in Islamabad, Pakistan

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.