Voices Behind the Pages: Negotiating Gender and Optical Inclusion in Sindh’s ESL Curriculum

Indian writing in English has dealt with many themes and concepts which relates to the current issues prevailing in the society. Inclusivity is one of the major concerns in interdisciplinary as well as transdisciplinary fields of literature in the contemporary period. Inclusivity in literature means the act of not excluding the people or members in the basis of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability etc. The research article central focus is on the concept of Gender Inclusivity, the difficulties in acquiring gender inclusion in the patriarchal Indian society is explained with the aid of the Indian mythology The Ramayana. Gender Inclusivity means the neutrality on gender concerns that’s no bias or discrimination based on the masculine or feminine gender. At the present scenario, the attainment of Gender inclusivity in almost all fields is a big question mark due to the prevailing gender differences especially for women in the patriarchal Indian society. This article portrays the two different mind-sets of people in the society towards gender discrimination and gender neutrality in the Indian society. The main objectives of this research article are to explore the gender non-inclusive or male dominated Indian society, to understand the pain and sufferings of suppressed women in the contemporary society, to compare and contrast the society which is gender inclusive and gender non-inclusive society and to explicate the need for gender inclusive society in near future in order to maintain peace and harmony.

Gender equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has been a persistent global issue for decades. In particular, the under-representation of girls in STEM has been highlighted as an ongoing challenge for many countries. Current approaches to promote equitable participation in STEM tend to focus on attracting school-aged girls to STEM. However, there is a growing recognition that addressing gender disparity in STEM should begin in early childhood, as gender norms and stereotypes affecting engagement in STEM emerge early on. In this paper, we explore factors influencing gendered access, engagement, and participation of young children in early years STEM through a critical review of literature on the topic of gender equity in early years STEM education. Informed by this review, we propose a conceptual framework for guiding curriculum design and development that aims to foster gender equity and inclusivity in early years STEM education. Positioning STEM practices and core values at its very heart, encapsulated through three intertwining themes of Everyday STEM, Career Awareness, and Gender Inclusivity, we argue that this framework has the potential to guide researchers, educators and parents in creating equitable opportunities for children of all genders to participate in STEM and in developing their strong sense of belonging in STEM.

Gender inclusivity in education is a critical component of creating equitable and empowering learning environments for all students. This paper explores the pivotal role of teachers in promoting gender-inclusive classrooms. It discusses the conceptual foundations of gender inclusivity, the challenges teachers face, and the strategies they employ to foster inclusive pedagogical practices. The paper also highlights the implications of teacher training, curriculum content, and school culture on gender inclusivity, emphasizing the need for systemic support and continuous professional development.

Despite efforts to address all forms of diversity among learners and promote inclusion in education, and much research done on inclusive education in Namibia, there remains a scarcity of empirical evidence of the inclusion of gender and sexual diversity in Namibian education. This study employed a Social Identity Perspective within a qualitative approach to explore the inclusion of gender and sexual diversity in the Namibian education context. Four education officers were selected through population sampling, and one hundred eighty-two teachers were purposively selected. The thematic analysis of data revealed minimal inclusion of gender and sexual diversity at the national and school levels. The Life Skills curriculum contains gender and sexual diversity content, and Life Skills teachers receive training on the subject content. However, the training program lacks content on gender and sexual diversity. Teachers do not teach sexuality, specifically sexual orientation content in Life Skills lessons, and heteronormative is the default norm. This study recommends including measures and guidelines on handling gender and sexual diversity in national educational frameworks. Further, there should be gender and sexual diversity content in the teacher training programs and school rules. The MoEAC should monitor Life Skills subject teaching.

This study investigated gender representation in English textbooks from Classes 6 to 10 in Bangladesh, using corpus analysis. AntConc, a textual analysis tool, was used to quantify the occurrence of gender-related lexical items in resources. The corpus comprises approximately 147,698 tokens distributed across the four textbooks. The results revealed significant disparities in the distribution of male- and female-associated lexical items. Here, male-related words occurred 1,958 times (1.33 %), whereas female-related words occurred 1,165 times (0.79 %). The highest imbalance ratio (0.94 %) was found in textbooks of class 6 having male represented words (1.95%) and female represented words (1.01%). This male-dominated gender disproportion appeared in the other three textbooks at different ratios, which may reflect Bangladesh’s cultural and societal norms. These distinctive and male-centred gender-biased textbooks may have an impact on students’ perceptions of gender roles and societal expectations. The findings of this corpus analysis predict how much textbook content may affect female students’ sense of inclusion and their collective consciousness of gender rights. Finally, it recommends ensuring gender equality and inclusion in the textbooks.

The need for gender inclusion was highlighted as the fifth sustainable development goal (SDG) (i.e. SDG5) and policies have been gearing towards attaining this objective and its subsequent effect on macroeconomic outcomes. Equally, the demonstrated trend of infrastructures in Africa in terms of stocks and future need is unique compared to the rest of the world. The objective of this study is therefore to empirically examine the effect of women’s political inclusion on infrastructural development in Africa. The results through the system GMM and Quantile Regression techniques show that women’s political inclusion enhances infrastructural development in Africa. The result is robust across different measures of infrastructures and political inclusion. Besides, the positive relationship is maintained across income groups, levels of political stability and export structure. However, the effect is not significant in countries with infrastructural scores around the extreme quantiles. The results of the study recommend African policy makers to prioritise the inclusion of women in the political agenda as one of the strategies towards the development of infrastructures. This could come through the putting in place of laws that favour women’s participation in politics. Moreover, the countries should ratify international conventions that favour gender inclusion.

A textbook is expected to cover all of the teaching necessities as well as educational values contained in the curriculum. Conversely, many scholars or researchers in the study of gender representation portrayed English language textbooks tend to have gender-biased in terms of gender representation in which males are represented more than females in many aspects. Hence, investigating how males and females are represented in Indonesian EFL textbooks is highly beneficial to be explored to clarify and update the finding based on the previous studies. The concern of this current study is to investigate gender representation in the Indonesian EFL textbook for vocational school students by using the framework proposed by (Amerian & Esmaili, 2014). The analysis of the data is based on critical discourse analysis and content analysis. Surprisingly, congruent with most previous studies, the finding reflects that there is inequality in terms of gender representation in which females are underrepresented in the textbook. The finding of this recent study pinpoints the depiction of how males and females are represented and depicted in the Indonesian EFL textbook, as a result, it is expected to convey the awareness of scholars, educators, textbook writers or designers, and policymakers as well related to this issue. Then, it is still highly suggested for scholars or researchers in future studies exploring gender representation in Indonesian EFL textbooks by using other books or other levels of education to evaluate the development of this issue.

During the past decade, the concept of diversity and inclusion has gained immense scope for the growth of organisations and the development of countries, thus attracting the attention of researchers and academicians. The purpose of this article is to better understand the concept of gender inclusion and provide a comprehensive review of the available literature from the past decade in this domain. The present study followed a bibliometric approach to draw inferences from 206 articles published in English over the time span of 2013–2023, retrieved from Scopus. The research methodology comprises four steps: data collection, data analysis, data visualisation and data interpretation. The research on gender inclusion has significantly increased from 2018 to 2023. The findings show the top contributing authors, prominent journals, significant keywords and dominating sectors in the research area. Despite the growing academic interest, the research in this area is still in its infancy and requires attention from researchers. The key constraint of the study is that it is based on the Scopus database, and the relevant studies that are not published in Scopus are being eliminated. This article provides useful information for managers as well as policymakers to make gender inclusion a key component while framing policies and practices. The article will provide insight on equality and sustainable goals.

This present study examines the role of financial inclusion dynamics (depth, access and efficiency) in mitigating the incidence of income inequality on gender inclusion in terms of women in business and women in politics. The following main findings are established. Income inequality reduces gender inclusion while financial inclusion dynamics dampen the negative effect of income inequality on gender inclusion. The corresponding net effects are negative. Considering positive conditional or interactive effects and the negative net effects, financial institution thresholds at which income inequality no longer reduces gender inclusion are provided and discussed. Policy implications are discussed.

This paper contributes to our knowledge of teacher educators' strategies for, and dilemmas with, working with gender inclusion in teachers' education. It illustrates how gender is constructed and reconstructed in teachers' education. The study revealed that teachers' education is not only – as earlier described – a highly feminised field, it is also a discipline that is permeated by horizontal and vertical segregation typical of higher education. The study analyses how university teacher educators experience and handle consequences of this horizontal segregation, building on interviews with subject representatives at a Swedish university. The results exemplify how university teachers reflect on gender policies and their own roles when working with teacher students. Heteronormative patterns also become visible in strategies meant to facilitate gender equality and desegregation. The author argues for the need to include university teachers' perspectives in future strategies for developing gender inclusion in university education.

The research was conducted with a descriptive quantitative approach. The main objective is to investigate the impact of digital tools on gender inclusion and student support in their school education to enhance academic quality. Additionally, the study aims to understand the frequency and level of utilization of these technologies in educational, social, and work-related activities. To achieve the research objective and address the stated question, female students from upper secondary education were specifically selected, representing first, second, and third-grade levels, respectively. Based on the provided data, it is evident that digital technologies play a crucial role in the current educational environment, particularly among younger students. The use of ICT in the learning process is highly valued by the respondents. Most consider that ICT provides them with relevant information, knowledge, and facilitates their learning process. ICT offers a powerful means to transform education and address gender inclusion in the classroom. Its capacity to improve access to education, provide innovative learning opportunities, and promote gender equality is invaluable.

This research aims to unpack the politics of gender equality and inclusion in municipal councils, focusing on the patterns of women’s political practices; the institutional impact of the national and local cultures on the organizational cultures. It is based on action-research and mixed-method format. Eight municipal councils in small and medium size Jewish, Arab and Jewish-Arab towns in the Northern district participate in the study. Initial findings suggest that women's meaningful involvement in the municipal strategic decision-making is partial. There is a significant gap between the declared strive for gender equality and inclusion and women's actual influence in decision-making. This gap looms particularly large in the Arab towns. The mechanisms of exclusion and potential avenues of counteracting them are discussed.

General science textbooks due to integrated contents of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and; Earth and Space, need special attention of curriculum developers. The contents in general science textbooks can be evaluated through different methods and curriculum analysis taxonomy (CAT) is one of these. This research paper explores the contents of general science textbook of 8th grade taught in all government schools and in some private schools of Punjab province. The contents of textbook were broken down in term of Piagetian developmental levels by using Curriculum Analysis Taxonomy (CAT). The findings show that majority of contents of General science textbook were at Concrete Operational level while a small number of contents demands Formal Operational level. This uneven distribution of contents at different Piagetian developmental levels were also observed when contents of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and; Earth and Space were separately studied. It is recommended that the distribution of contents should follow model based on Piagetian development levels and the selection of contents should be on the basis of breadth and depth of the concepts.

Equity and inclusion in education are core values of the right to quality education for all, irrespective of gender, social origin or personal identity. As communities seek to develop educational institutions that offer access to and encourage full participation from heterogeneous student populations, the dimension of gender assumes critical significance. This chapter proposes that equity and inclusion in education should be based on a differentiated and sensitive treatment of gender as a determinant in shaping education. It also discusses how gender differences have been historically embedded and systematically reinforced and argues for the need to address a gender dimension in the system of education. Distinguished by its intersectional approach, this dialogue acknowledges how multiple identities, such as race, class, ability, etc., combine with gender to shape a student’s experiences and opportunities within schools. Crucial strategies towards the promotion of gender equity are discussed, including inclusive pedagogies, the importance of women in educational leadership and the role of community in shaping policy. The chapter concludes that gender equity in education is important to improve student outcomes at both the individual and the societal level. And by focusing on gender inclusion, the authors can ensure that more learners are equipped to succeed in a world that is becoming both increasingly diverse and more interconnected. The implications contributed by this chapter should encourage educational stakeholders, policymakers and other representatives to work together on improvement programmes that emphasise quality and inclusive practice in the educational system.

Albeit cultural content in English textbooks have been much reported, little empirical evidence addresses global or international-distributed English textbooks. To fill this void, the present qualitative content analysis study aims to explore the representation of cultural content in international English textbooks used for Indonesian senior high school students. For another contribution, we also attempt to gain English teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in the textbooks examined through written interviews. Grounded in a social semiotic approach, the findings showcased that the textbooks’ content represents inner-circle countries in the aspect of perspectives, products, persons, and practices. Further, the imbalance in the cultural representation of the outer circle and expanding circle countries indicated that the authors do not sufficiently increase the global cultural awareness of English language learners because other cultural perspectives on varieties of English are not included. The interviews analysis revealed that the cultural contents were short and required improvement.