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Schooling the ‘other’: therepresentation of gender and nationalidentities in Pakistani curriculum textsNaureen Durrani aa Learning Development Unit , University of Central Lancashire ,Preston, UKPublished online: 09 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Naureen Durrani (2008) Schooling the ‘other’: the representation of genderand national identities in Pakistani curriculum texts, Compare: A Journal of Comparative andInternational Education, 38:5, 595-610, DOI: 10.1080/03057920802351374

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Schooling the ‘other’: the representation of gender and national identities inPakistani curriculum texts

Naureen Durrani*

Learning Development Unit, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

Until relatively recently, educational research in developing countries has focusedmainly on issues of access for addressing gender inequalities in education. This paperargues that challenging patriarchal relations in schooling and education requires movingbeyond access to understanding the ways the curriculum acts as a set of discursivepractices which position girls and boys unequally and differently constitute them asgendered and nationalised/ist subjects. Using curriculum texts from Pakistan, the paperexplores how gender and national identities intersect in a dynamic way in the processesof schooling. The paper illustrates the ideological power of both curriculum and schoolexperiences in fashioning the reciprocal performance and construction of gender andnational identities in Pakistan. It contends that in its current form, education is a meansof maintaining, reproducing and reinforcing the gender hierarchies that characterisePakistan.

Keywords: Pakistan; curriculum; gender; national identities

Introduction

Education is regarded as a key instrument for achieving equitable relations among diverse

social groups, particularly between women and men (Stromquist 2006). Therefore,

reducing gender disparities in access to education is considered fundamental to

empowering women. However, gender inequities in education go beyond access

(Humphreys 2005). Claims of gender equity on the basis of access often obscure the

ways that school experiences are gendered (Dunne 2007). Similarly, by ignoring the

content of the curriculum and school experiences, feminists underestimate the ideological

function of schooling and its significance to the construction of gendered identities

(Stromquist 2006). Being the ‘vital centre’ of the education system, the analysis of

curricular texts is central to capturing the range of images available to individuals for

identification and acquiring a sense of themselves (Arnot 2002). The significance of

education for the development of cohesive nationhood and the production of citizens for

the nation-state implies that the construction of gender identities is intertwined with that

of national identities. Education is thus crucial to the construction of both gendered and

national subjects and subjectivities. However, educational research has largely ignored the

ways nationalism shapes gender identity-formation (Arnot and Dillabough 2006). The

emphasis in this paper, then, is on the ways gender and national identities intersect and

reciprocally construct each other through curriculum texts and school experiences in

Pakistan.

*Email: ndurrani@uclan.ac.uk

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Vol. 38, No. 5, October 2008, 595–610

ISSN 0305-7925 print/ISSN 1469-3623 online

# 2008 British Association for International and Comparative Education

DOI: 10.1080/03057920802351374

http://www.informaworld.com

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Below I provide a theoretical overview that maps the relationship between national

identities, gender and education. It is followed by a discussion of the research study. A

themed discussion of the findings is offered under three main headings: I first focus on the

intersection of gender and national identities particularly in relation to Islam; I then

consider the ways in which the performance of Pakistani identity is masculinised and

militarised. Finally, I explore the ways in which Pakistani women are represented in school

textbooks.

National identity, gender and education

The discourse of nationalism constructs the ‘imagined community’ of the nation

(Anderson 1991). It seeks to produce internal coherence by dividing the world into ‘us’

and ‘them’ (Ozkirimli 2005). Nationalism aims at eliminating all kinds of status

differentials based on ascriptive features – ethnicity, religion, language, sex, class – that

divide the population internally (Gellner 1983). This unified national identity is reinforced

with reference to an ‘other’, and ‘our’ difference from ‘them’. National identification is

thus relational; it signifies loyalty and attachment to one community and casts others as

outsiders. Because a completely homogenous nation is a myth (Yuval-Davis 1997) and

nationalism is about difference, the imagined community cannot be all inclusive

(Chatterjee 1993). Internal hierarchies based on gender, religion, race and class often

arise, despite the rhetoric of internal unity (Meyer 2000). But the nationalist discourse

downplays internal plurality, especially in post-colonial nations where the creation of the

state precedes nation formation and the state actively seeks nation-building projects. The

modern nation-state is thus ‘produced through a totalizing process that entails a relentless

press toward homogeneity’ (Verdery 1996, 231).

National identity is thus not a ‘given’ entity but naturalised through state institutions

including schooling (Ozkirimli 2005) and everyday interactions (Billig 1995). National

identities are constantly performed at an official level as in state rituals and ceremonies, in

educational practices, at a popular level as in sports, cultural and religious ceremonies, and

in the taken-for-granted details of social interaction and routines of everyday life (Edensor

2002). If nation is socially constructed, we need to explore whose interests are served by

the dominant national imagining (Ozkirimli 2005).

Gender identities, like national identities, are also constituted not by ‘a founding act

but rather a regulated pattern or repetition’ (Butler 1990, 145). Gender identity assumes its

apparently ‘natural’ status through the repeated performance of gender norms. Butler also

argues that the practices that produce gendered subjects are also the sites where critical

agency can be exercised. The ‘performativity’ of gender and national identities implies that

identity is dynamic, always in the process of production. Like nation, gender is relational

and involves hierarchy and power. If in the performance of identity in everyday social

interactions, the two identifications converge (Sharp 1996), then both identities could

eventually change if either the discourse of the nation or that of gender changes (Mayer

2000).

Although feminist scholars have argued that nationalism cannot be understood

without understanding its integral relationship with gender (Kandiyoti 1991; Yuval-Davis

1997), major analyses of nationalism tend to be silent on how national and gender

identities interact (for example, Gellner 1983; Smith 1991; Anderson 1991). They tend not

to see the ways in which national identity structures the representations of the nation

around conceptions of masculinity and femininity (Mayer 2000). In effect, nations have

‘gender regimes’ (Connell 1990, 523) that institutionalise differential access to resources,

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power and notions of belonging. Significantly, Kandiyoti (1991) argues that in contexts

where women serve as boundary markers between ‘us’ and ‘them’, they are prevented from

becoming full-fledged citizens.

Nationalism is explicitly gendered in contexts – for example, Ireland, Israel, India and

Iran – where religion is the boundary separating ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’. Religion and

nationalism converge in their aim of de-emphasising and delegitimising internal diversity

and combine to construct the ideal woman of the nation in order to mark community

boundaries. In Northern Ireland, for example, Mayer (2000, 120) argues that unionist

identity ‘draws heavily on warrior symbols, thus reflecting the staunchly patriarchal values

of unionism … and its exclusion of women from political leadership’. Likewise, Jacoby

(1999) demonstrates that Jewish women in Israel tend to be included in the nation-building

projects ‘as mothers of soldiers and ideological appendages of male leaders and fighters’

(398). Similarly, Chowdhry (2000) claims that militantly religious and militantly

nationalist ideologies converge in contemporary India to construct privileged Hindu

and villainous Muslim identities. In the same way, Papanek (1994) examines how

Khomeini’s Iran used the ideal of womanhood as a symbol of state and to normalise

‘separate worlds’ for women and men to ensure conformity to state policy.

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 (Hussain 2000). 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.1 It resulted in a deeply gendered model of citizenship with the

legal status of women increasingly defined by their religious membership (Mullally 2005). The

demarcation of gender roles in Pakistan has become increasingly entangled with debates on

national identity. 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. Below I describe a study of

Pakistani texts which take as their focus the ways in which gender and nationalism come

together. The analysis of curricular texts is important, as they are a key cultural resource

that pupils use to learn about ‘doing’ gender (Jackson and Gee 2005) and to develop their

national consciousness (Nasser 2004).

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This paper draws on data from a research project which was designed to explore

identity-curriculum links in Pakistan. 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 provides detailed instructions for textbook authors,

including the number and topics of the lessons to be covered. 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. Below I describe the methods used in the project before

describing some of the ways in which these standardised national textbooks for a range of

curriculum subjects constructed ‘official’ versions of masculinity and femininity and how

teachers and pupils engaged with such political messages about their role within nation

building and national culture and security.

The research study

Textbook analysis can take various forms. While quantitative content analysis can provide

useful insights, it does not allow for multiple interpretations (Mills 1995). Qualitative analysis

can be useful for mapping the general ideology provided in books (Kalmus 2004). However,

as we shall see, students also bring their class, ethnic, religious and gender backgrounds with

them into the classroom, all of which influence their reading of the texts and may lead them to

accept, reinterpret or reject what they read (Apple 1993). Teachers also mediate and

transform the text material when they use it in the classrooms. Explorations of textbooks in

use, therefore, are as important as the textbook itself (Leach 2003).

The project began in September 2005 with data collection lasting approximately five

months. I focused on written curriculum comprising current education policy, national

curriculum draft in Urdu, and grade V textbooks (written for children age 9–10 years) in

Urdu, Social Studies and English produced by the NWFP (North West Frontier Province)

Textbook Board and approved by the Federal Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing).

All three textbooks were undated and are referenced as having been published by the

NWFP Textbook Board (undated a), (undated b) and (undated c) respectively in the

‘References’ section of this paper. The textbooks were not available for sale in the market

and were provided to schools by the then NWFP government free of cost. At the time of

the research, they were used as the only texts in state schools in the province and Federally

Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Apart from this textual analysis I also used an ethnographic approach to investigate

school processes, teachers and students’ practices and perspectives in four primary state

schools in the NWFP, two girls’ schools and two boys’ schools, one each in a rural and an

urban setting. Within each primary school, the study focused on grade V teachers and

students (age 9–10 years). The enacted curriculum was studied through classroom

observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers. Five teachers participated in

the study, all of whom were Pakistani and Muslim.

Students’ views were captured through an individual participatory activity in which they

drew images of things they thought stood for and represented ‘us’ – Pakistanis. Students were

given half an hour for the activity and they were free to draw as many images they could. The

ideas offered by the participatory tools were discussed and explored further through single

sex focus group. In total, 145 students participated in the study, of which 36 were rural girls,

35 were rural boys, 36 were urban girls and 38 were urban boys. The national and religious

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composition of the students was as follows: 142 were Pakistanis and 3 were Afghan refugees;

142 were Muslims and 3 were non-Muslims (two boys and a girl). An overwhelming majority

of the students (95.1%) were Pukhtuns, who have ethnic connection to Pukhtuns of

Afghanistan and are also geographically closer to Afghanistan. These students were also

homogenous in terms of social class and most belonged to poor families.

The analysis is approached from a critical post-structuralist stance. The texts

(including visual imagery) were treated as discourses in a Foucauldian sense to mean

‘ways of constituting knowledge, together with social practices, forms of subjectivity, and

power relations’ (Weedon 1997, 105). Since national identities are (re)constructed within

social representations (Hall 1992), a qualitative and quantitative content analysis was also

used to capture the images of Pakistani women and men in the curricular texts.

Identities were not only represented and constructed in the texts I analysed, but were

also produced by my presence in the classroom and by my reading of the interview data

(Jackson and Gee 2005). Not only did I approach the field and data with my social identity

as a middle class, Muslim, Pukhtun, and Pakistani woman but my social identity was also

interpreted by the participants, which generated a specific set of data. While my social

identity helped in obtaining the trust of my respondents, having no institutional

affiliations with primary education, NWFP Textbook Board and the Curriculum Wing

facilitated an open and relaxed attitude on the part of the respondents (for example, the

non-Muslim girl actively contested not only the national identity but also the image of the

‘ideal’ Pakistani woman as constructed in the textbooks).

Islam and Pakistani national identity

As discussed above, an important starting point for the analysis of Pakistani national

identity in school textbooks is an understanding of the relative positioning of religion and

gender in relation to nationhood. 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’

(Government of Pakistan 1998, 2). The official curriculum not surprisingly therefore uses

religion – Islam – as the chief marker that forms the boundary between Pakistanis and the

‘other’. The Urdu curriculum sets the following objective to be achieved through the

teaching of Urdu which is a compulsory subject for all students:

To create awareness in the students that they are members of the Muslim Ummah [nation].(Government of Pakistan 2002, 1)

The Urdu curriculum acknowledges the important role of teachers in the socialisation

of students and prescribes guiding principles to regulate teachers’ behaviour. These

principles presuppose all teachers to be Muslims.

Teachers’ behaviour should be such as to express love and respect for Islam, Pakistan andnational values. (Government of Pakistan 2002, 14)

The Social Studies textbook uses ‘totalization’ – fixing the meanings of signs in order to

subsume all differences (Naseem 2006, 451).

Almost all of us are Muslims. We have one God and one Quran and we are all the Ummat[followers] of the Prophet (peace be upon him) of Allah. … All these points show that theentire nation has almost the same ways of living. (Social Studies textbook, 61–2)

The curricular texts, thus, overwhelmingly associate Islam with Pakistani identity. This

embeddedness of Islam within the national imagination was also evident in students’ own

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voices. The images students drew to represent ‘us’ – Pakistanis – included Islamic symbols,

in addition to other images. Such symbols included the Quran, mosque (the image on the

left of Figure 1), Jaay-e-namaz (prayer-mat; the image on the right of Figure 1), rosary,

boys/men offering namaz (the ritualistic obligatory prayer that Muslims offer five times a

day at set times), duah (a prayer/wish with both hands joined and raised), Kalima (the

verse—‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger’), calligraphy of

Allah, and subhan Allah (praise be to Allah). Muslim girls from both schools, however,

drew more Islamic symbols than boys (e.g. they drew 65 Islamic images out of a total 337

images; the boys, by contrast, drew 16 Islamic images out of 313 images).

Similarly, students’ initial and spontaneous self-identification revealed that the largest

proportion of students, 33.8%, identified themselves as Muslims as compared to 24.1% of

students who identified themselves as Pakistanis. Likewise, students across the schools

employed Islamic symbols and discourse when I asked them what made them feel proud of

being a Pakistani.

Rural Girl (RG)14: We’re followers of the Prophet.

Urban Girl (UG)20: We go to madrassa and offer prayers. I learn the Quran there.

Rural Boy (RB)4: We live our life according to Islam.

Urban Boy (UB)28: We’re Muslims. Everyone is afraid of us – we have the power of Kalima.

Students associated ‘being Pakistani’ with ‘being Muslim’ by which they meant practising

Islamic rituals regularly. The students also perceived their ethnic (Pukhtun) identity in

terms of a very conservative form of Islam (discussed fully in Durrani 2008).

Figure 1. Religious symbols drawn by girls.

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The intersection of gender and Pakistani national identities was also revealed in other

ways; for example, the minimal representation of women. The representation of women in

illustrations, everyday characters and national icons is minimal across the textbooks

analysed. Of textbook illustrations, 21.4% were female compared to 77.5% male pictures.

Figures which were difficult to categorise by gender either because the picture was not

clear or no gender clue provided in the text formed 1.2% of the sample. Of everyday

characters mentioned by name, 42.1% were female compared to 57.8% male characters.

The small gender gap between female and male everyday characters results from an

improved gender representation in the English language textbook which depicts 48.2%

female characters compared to 51.7% male characters. Interestingly, the English textbook

is authored by four female writers. By comparison, none of the five Social Studies

textbook authors is a female and only one of the three Urdu textbook writers is a woman.2

Likewise, the representation of female icons at 15.1% compared to 84.8% male icons is

dismally low across the Urdu and Social Studies textbooks. There were no lessons on

national icons in the English textbook.

Gender bias in language also helps constitute gender hierarchy. The specifics of the

Urdu language are significant here as gender is represented through inflexion in the verb

rather than through the use of the pronoun ‘he’ or ‘she’.

He [the Prime Minister] is elected by members of the national assembly. (Social Studiestextbook, 82)

Strikingly, this language is used in spite of the fact that, on two occasions, the country has

had a female prime minister. The textbooks thus establish a gender asymmetry in which

women are subordinated to men.

These issues concerning the representation of women were raised in interviews with

teachers. They all agreed that women had been underrepresented in the textbooks.

Teacher C: Everything is done by men. Females are almost non-existent. All heroes of theindependence movement are men. If you find a woman at all, she is someone’s wife, daughteror sister.

However, teachers did not use these insights in their teaching. There was limited evidence

that this under-representation of women was addressed in lessons. Additionally, none of

the teachers regarded the gendered language used in textbooks as evidence of a gender

bias. In extended discussions, the male teachers said since they were men, they took such

language for granted and both male and female teachers said they did not notice it because

things had always been like that.

Students’ perceptions, particularly those of the boys, resonated with the gendered

representation found in the curriculum. The most striking feature of the images drawn by

boys from both localities, when asked to illustrate ‘us’, was the absence of women. While

there was not a single drawing of a Pakistani woman in the images they drew, there were

many of boys/men who were either carrying the Pakistani flag in their hand or saluting it.

The images drawn by girls, while including women, were predominantly those of men.

Moreover, they depicted boys as active (carrying or saluting the national flag (the image

on the right of Figure 2 below), praying with a rosary (the image on the left of Figure 2),

playing etc.) and girls as passive (wearing the national dress) or stereotypically (cooking).

Gendering the performance of Pakistani identity

National narratives involve national icons who provide images of individuals with

exemplary qualities worthy of emulation. Since both gender and national identity are

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performative, the textbook icons construct the ideal image of the Pakistani nation through

the performance of normative gendered identity and at the same time constructing thenation through those performative acts. 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’ (80).

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 Muslimwarrior), 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:

N Hazrat Imam Hussain who was martyred at Karbala;

N Tipu Sultan who was martyred fighting the British;

N Muhammad-bin-Qasim who defeated Raja Dahir and conquered Sindh in 711 AD;

N Mehmood Ghaznavi who invaded India 17 times and remained victorious each time;

N Jamal-ud-Din Afghani, a great supporter of pan-Islamism;

Figure 2. Girls’ images of ‘us’ depicting boys as producers of national identity.

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N Shah Waliullah who persuaded Ahmad Shah Abdali to come to help the Indian

Muslims militarily against the Marhattas;

N Ahmad Shah Abdali who curbed the power of the Marhattas;

N Subaktageen, the ruler of Ghazni who defeated Raja Jaypal;

N the Mughal King, Aurangzeb Alamgir, who is famous for his militant enforcement

of orthodox Sunni Islam;

N Haider Ali, who fought the British several times; and

N Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi, a religious scholar who mobilised Muslims against the

British.

From the Urdu textbook these heroes include Khushal Khan who is praised as a skilful

and brave military commander; Jamal-ud-Din Afghani (also described in the Social

Studies textbook) who is praised for his pan-Islamism; Hazrat Khalid-bin-Waleed, the

Muslim commander who fought the Byzantine Empire; Hazrat Zarar, ‘who belonged to

the family of mujahideen (holy warriors)’ (Urdu textbook, 128); and Sultan Noor ud Din

Zangi, whose ‘entire life was spent in serving the masses and doing jihad’ (ibid, 29).

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.

The rest of the male heroes are praised for their scholarship, wisdom and greatness in

the Urdu textbook. They include Hazrat Imam Jaffer, a great Muslim scholar and

religious leader; Hazrat Luqman, a physician and scholar; Hazrat Malik-bin-Dinar,

another Muslim scholar; and the Mughal King, Shah Jehan. Within the curriculum and

textbooks, the dominant association of religion, the military and readiness to fight with

the Pakistani identity left women largely absent from the historical narrative.

Figure 3. Pictures of national heroes students identified with.

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In focus groups, students were asked to choose an icon from the textbooks. The icon

students identified with the most was Jinnah (29.6%) (the picture on the left of Figure 3)because ‘He freed us from Hindus’. After Jinnah, most boys chose icons represented in

conflict (20.6%), a further 10.9% chose Rashid Minhas (the picture on the right of

Figure 3), a military hero from the old Urdu textbook and only a small number (4.1%)

selected a female icon. The reasons given to justify their choice of icon reflected the impact

of the textbook: ‘Mehmud Ghaznavi destroyed Hindu temples and idols’, ‘Muhammad-

bin-Qasim fought the Hindus’, and ‘He [Rashid Minhas] sacrificed his life for Pakistan’.

In contrast, many girls (44.5%) chose either Hazrat Khadija or Hazrat Fatima. Hazrat

Khadija was selected because ‘She married our Prophet and served him in every way’.

Hazrat Fatima was termed favourite for being ‘a good wife and mother’. In the third and

last place some girls (13.9%) chose icons associated with conflict.

The students’ responses reflect such gendered national iconography. The valorised

qualities of the national icons while related to Islam were especially limited for womenwho were praised for their service to men. With few exceptions, the male icons were all

strong Muslim/Pakistani nationalists antagonistic to demonised outsiders and very often

actively engaged in conflict and battle.

These textbooks also imagine Pakistan through the two-nation theory and through

asserting Pakistan’s difference from India/Hindus. This difference is accomplished by

emphasising the significance of the military. The Social Studies textbook describes differentwars that took place between Hindus and Muslims at various points in history before and

after the partition of India. In narrating these wars, religious imagery is used to naturalise

religious nationalism. The battles between the Muslim and Hindu forces are couched in

religious terms which heighten emotional investment in the war and project religion as a key

identifier for Pakistanis. In these battles, the Muslims are portrayed as victorious, heroic,

passionate and masculine; the Hindus are depicted as cowardly, defeatist and feminine:

Raja Dahir twice gathered a huge army but his army could not withstand … the emotion andpassion of Muslims. Hindu army had a terrible defeat and Raja Dahir was killed. (SocialStudies textbook, 113)

Pakistan’s wars with India are used to construct a national(istic) past in which the army is

portrayed as the chief pillar of the Pakistani identity. The narration of the 1965 warbetween India and Pakistan begins with the gendered assertion that India attacked

Pakistan ‘stealthily’ and after a sound beating by the masculine Pakistan army, the Indian

forces ‘ran away like women’ (Naseem 2006, 462). Gender, as well as religion, is used to

accentuate the representations of the Indian army as denigrated and feminised in the

description of ‘them’.

India planned to capture Lahore stealthily but the brave men of the Pakistan army destroyedthe Indian plan … After a crushing defeat in Lahore, India opened another battle front nearSialkot … but the courageous self-sacrificing Pakistani soldiers smashed the Indian tanks topieces. … Pak-falcons [Pakistani pilots] destroyed most Indian bases and blew the Indianplanes up everywhere. Pakistan was also dominant in the naval battle. Therefore, India wasforced into accepting a ceasefire. (Social Studies textbook, 10–11)

The textbooks create the myth of an ever looming enemy ready to harm Pakistan. By

fostering national insecurity, the army is portrayed as the defender and protector of the

nation and national land.

They [Hindus] had evil designs against Pakistan. (Social Studies textbook, 9)

In students’ perceptions, the military was an integral feature of Pakistani identity but in

a gendered way. The images students drew to represent ‘us’ – Pakistanis – were highly

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gendered. The boys from both localities drew a vast range of weapons including swords,

various kinds of guns and bombs, tanks, missiles, and rocket launchers. Pakistani army

helicopters and the highest military award – Nishan-e-Haider – were also drawn. Pakistani

soldiers were depicted in combat shooting enemy soldiers. For these boys the ‘us’ in

Pakistan was associated with combat and the army and therefore strongly masculine. By

contrast, with one exception the girls from both localities did not draw any war images

and weapons to represent Pakistanis. All students expressed an impending external threat

to the integrity of Pakistan from the non-Muslim ‘other’ – India and the US – and looked

to the army for protection. However, the boys were more vocal in articulating this threat

as well as the ways to deal with the enemy.

RB1: We need a strong army and weapons to defend ourselves from India and America.

Restricted and homogenised representation of women

This construction of Pakistani national identity would remain incomplete without a

corresponding construction of the ‘ideal’ Pakistani woman represented in the curriculum

texts. Three elements of the representation stand out: dress codes, the gendering of work

and gendered public and domestic spaces.

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.

The issue of ‘appropriate’ ways of dressing by Pakistani women was raised by students.

Some girls from both areas termed ‘bad Pakistanis’ as those who did not wear

‘appropriate’ dress. The wearing of appropriate dress was demanded from women and not

men. Some urban girls said they felt proud of being Pakistanis because ‘there is difference

between boys and girls. Girls don’t cut their hair short and don’t wear trousers’. Similarly,

some boys termed TV as bad because ‘it shows women in inappropriate dresses’.

The gendering of work

The textual or graphic representation of men and women in professions/careers in the

three textbooks shows that women’s representation in paid work is extremely rare (only

five women compared to 37 men). Except for pottery making which is carried out inside

the home, there is only one instance when a woman is portrayed in a profession:

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She will become a teacher soon. (English textbook, 42)

With this one exception, all knowledge providers are represented by men (teachers); all

decision makers are men (head teacher); all authority figures are men (deputy inspectorpolice, deputy inspector general police, provincial governor); all socially desirable

professions are held by men (doctor, dentist, government employment); and all skilled

(carpenter, blacksmith and tailor) and unskilled (gardener, waste collector, and waste

buyers) jobs are held by men.

All the teachers I interviewed expressed the view that the representation of women in

textbooks did not reflect their real contribution to society. But in their actual practice,

most of them, both male and female, reinforced such a portrayal of women rather thanchallenging it. For example, the concept of men as sole breadwinner was reinforced in one

classroom. While teaching the topic ‘Our problems and their solutions’ in a social studies

class, a female teacher told the girls, ‘One man cannot afford to bring up ten children’.

This was said despite the fact that it is women/mothers who bring children up and that the

teacher herself had been the sole breadwinner for quite a while since her husband’s death.

In addition, the textbooks portray a restricted representation of women by depicting

them mostly as mothers and engaged in familial activities. While the valorisation ofmotherhood 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’ (Arnot 2002, 69).

Most students supported the sexual division of labour in focus group discussion. The

rural girls did not even entertain the idea of boys cooking or doing house chores.

I: Have you ever asked your mother to make your brother cook as well?

RGs: Why would we do that!? What are we for?

All urban girls said they also helped their mother in housework. They defended their brothers

when asked if they would demand their brothers to help in house chores. A few, however,

showed some signs of challenging this view. The rural boys were the most vocal in opposingboys doing jobs that are traditionally perceived as women’s, followed by the urban boys.

RBs: We don’t work in the kitchen. We only eat there.

UB4: We clean our school but not our house because it’s the women who clean the house.

Students’ views on this issue have to be seen, however, in the context of students’ social class as

well as the Pakistani society in general, both of which may be influencing their perspectives.

Gendered public and domestic space

One way of institutionalising gendered power relations is the division of space into

domestic, which is associated with women, and the public which is considered a maledomain. This institutionalised spatial exclusion of women from the public realm reinforces

prevailing male domination (Spain 1992) and promotes gender segregation. The textbooks

reflect this association of space and gender relations by depicting women/girls either

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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’ isthus 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:

Since embroideries are usually done in homes, they are made by women. (Social Studiestextbook, 51)

The messages related to gendered space in the textbooks were reinforced in schools. The

female teachers and mature students remained inside the school premises once they

entered the school until the end of the school day, guarded by a male gate-keeper. In

contrast, boys observed their teachers moving out of school at will and they too were

allowed to buy themselves snacks from outside during tea-break.

Students across the schools condemned women who violated the social norm ofobserving 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’.

All rural boys strongly favoured purdah for women and took great pride in the rural

women for being more protective of their honour: ‘‘‘Our’’ women are modest. … Women

of other places [cities] roam about in dupatta’. The urban boys also held it their

responsibility to ensure the protection of their family’s honour by the imposition of purdah

on ‘their’ women. Male students generally perceived purdah as essential to the performance

of Pukhtun identity.

UB33: Won’t I peel her [my sister’s] skin off, if she stopped observing purdah?

Again, students’ ethnic (Pukhtun) identity seems to be an important influence as they saw

purdah as an important feature of Pukhtun identity.

Conclusion

The paper has explored the ways in which national curriculum and officially produced

textbooks construct gender and Pakistani identities reciprocally through representing

particular versions of Pakistani identity. It also shows how these representations have been

employed by students in the construction of their gender and national identities. The

ideological work of the curriculum lies in representing the Pakistani identity in a particular

way. In this case the internal social and cultural heterogeneity was overlaid by

representations of homogenous unity. Certain boundaries were emphasised and certainsubject positions were prioritised in the representation of Pakistani identity, reproducing

patterns of (gender) inequality and power. The curriculum constructs national and gender

identities reciprocally by offering the ‘normal’, ‘obvious’ and ‘natural’ ways of being a

Pakistani woman and man. The rather tight representations of Pakistani identity drew

boundaries around its key feature, Islam, to distinguish it from external others but it also

limited the scope of those who actually comprise the Pakistani nation. The most

significant boundary of internal ‘other’ was that of gender.

The dominant subject positions offered to Pakistani men in the curriculum are related

to religious leadership and the military. The strong association of the military with the

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Pakistani identity constructs the Pakistani nation as highly gendered where men are

portrayed as the defenders of the nation and women are subordinated to and portrayed

only in relation to them. Students’ identification with textbook icons was similarly

gendered, with girls mainly identifying with two female icons and boys with the

conquerors, martyrs and religious reformers.

The textbooks I analysed portray a restricted and homogenised representation of the

‘ideal’ Pakistani woman. Within these idealised representations, the burden of construct-

ing national and religious identity through dress is left to women. Women are excluded

from paid jobs and portrayed in nurturing and caring roles. The gendered representation

of space associates women with the domestic sphere. Students’ perceptions were consistent

with the portrait of the idealised woman represented in the textbooks.

I have identified the curriculum as a set of discursive practices that constitute gendered

subjectivities which serve the interest of the dominant groups in Pakistan – the military,

religious leaders, and men – and marginalise and silence the interests of women, non-

Muslims and civil society. The findings suggest the success of the curriculum in

interpellating the students as subjects through which they become agents of national,

religious and gender ideologies that sustain the existing social relations in Pakistan.

Although students’ voices were in line with the curriculum, this does not rule out the

influence of other cultural resources such as family, social class, ethnicity, peers and the

larger social milieu in the NWFP. For this group of students, it seems that ethnic identity,

class and the influence of the Soviet-Afghan war as well as the current war on terror in

Afghanistan may have reinforced the curricular impact.

The paper has illustrated the significance of qualitative work in unveiling the ways the

curriculum constructs relations of power. Furthermore, the study has highlighted the

importance of teachers in constructing students’ identities that are empowering, especially

for girls. However, their potential as change agents cannot be taken for granted. To be

able to promote reflection on society and the transformation of gender norms, the teachers

would need to be helped through appropriate in-service and pre-service training as well as

gender transformative curricula. The inconsistencies between teachers’ perspectives and

their practices raise questions about the efficacy of interview as an instrument for

developing understanding about classroom practices.

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to Madeleine Arnot, Shailaja Fennell and the anonymous reviewers for their criticalcomments which helped me improve this paper.

Notes

1. For example, the Law of Evidence of 1984 limits women’s legal capacity by reducing the value oftheir attestations of evidence to half that of and unacceptable without that of a man (Mumtazand Shaheed 1987). The notorious Hudood Ordinance of 1979 which debarred women rapevictims from testifying on their own behalf (ibid.) has now been reformed under the Women’sProtection Act, 2006, which transfers the offence of zina-bil-jabr (rape) from the Hudoodordinance to the Pakistan Penal Code to spare a woman’s automatic prosecution on the basis ofan assumed confession of fornication if she is unable to prove her charge of rape (Government ofPakistan 2006).

2. Despite equal gender representation, the English textbook, like the other two textbooks,depicted homogenised and restricted images of women. This shows that the textbook messagesare gendered irrespective of the gender of the textbook author.

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