Abstract
This paper analyses the role of national level reforms in the school curriculum and initial teacher education in gender justice in conflict-affected Pakistan, using a multidisciplinary framework applied to multiple data sets from selected teacher education institutions in Sindh. The school curriculum texts analysed potentially perpetuate gender injustice and foster conflict. While teacher education reforms offer the potential for transformative gender justice, gender remains peripheral in initial teacher education curriculum. Furthermore, institutional practices entrench gendered norms. Lecturers’ and teachers’ limited understanding of their role and capacity for transformative gender justice pose challenges to education for gender justice, social cohesion and conflict mitigation. Informed by our understanding of gender as a social construct, multiple strategies within and beyond education are offered towards transformative gender justice.
Highlights
The 2030 sustainable development agenda frames the sustainable development goal (SDG) 4 for education as the key driver for the realisation of the remaining 16 SDGs, including SDG 5 that focuses on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls
The interplay between education policies, genderequality and conflict is reflected in the global indicator 4.7 which focuses on education for gender equality and the ‘promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence’, and requires identifying the extent to which national education policies, curricula, teacher education and student assessment mainstream gender equality
Findings are presented in three sub-sections, starting with representation of gender and conflict in the curriculum texts
Summary
The 2030 sustainable development agenda frames the sustainable development goal (SDG) 4 for education as the key driver for the realisation of the remaining 16 SDGs, including SDG 5 that focuses on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. A review of literature on the relationship between gender, education and conflict highlights a range of theoretical and empirical gaps. Much of the literature talks about young men as most likely to be perpetrators and victims of violence, and women to be victims of gender-based violence. This limits understanding of the ways the social construction of gender identities is connected to conflict. Limited empirical evidence exists regarding how educational reforms, including those in the curriculum and teacher education, may contribute to social cohesion and conflict mitigation (Horner et al, 2015). The need to subject assumptions regarding the positive relationship between education and gender equality to empirical scrutiny is highlighted (Khurshid, 2016)
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