Exposition Of Gender Awareness In Primary Textbooks Of Punjab: Gendered Content Analysis

Gender is a socially constructed phenomenon through which a society assigns certain roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes to men and women. Usually children develop their gender identities and learn what being male or female meant, between the ages of 3 to 7years. These concepts been taught by society through socialization which includes various agents of socialization and learning. After parents schools are most influential agents of socialization where students learn from peers, teachers and books. Text books have a long-lasting impact on students’ interpersonal development and provide role models for children in defining standards for feminine and masculine behaviors. Considering the impact of textbooks on child development; this study was designed to review how gender is represented in the texts and how the themes of stories and pictures in text books are presenting gender awareness? The sample of the research was Urdu textbooks of primary level (1-5) being taught in schools of the Punjab. We used content analysis to find out the concepts about gender awareness and also calculated the frequencies of pictures presenting gender ratio in concepts of the textbooks. The results showed gender biases in the content of the textbooks and lack of the content that promote gender awareness among primary level students. Male gender is over represented and stereotypical beliefs prevail in pictorial representation as males being shown as doctors and females as housewives. It is suggested to involve gender specialists, school psychologists and educators in developing curriculum to integrate gender perspective and gender awareness at all levels and to eliminate gender biases in textbooks so that to develop an equitable society.