Students’ views on gender equality initiatives and gender-focused curriculum in higher education institutions in Kazakhstan

• In Event: Fostering and promoting gender equality in higher education

Proposal

This study explores the ways the Government of Kazakhstan’s policy of mainstreaming gender in higher education institutions (HEIs) is enacted on the ground and to what effect by examining the perspectives of students who have been exposed to the gender-focused curriculum in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan has initiated the policy of gender mainstreaming in HEIs to fulfill its commitment to global gender equality initiatives, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Declaration on advancing women’s Rights, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including SDG 4 (Education) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality). Kazakhstan has also promulgated legislation to promote gender equality, including the Law on Equal Rights and Opportunities and the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence. A number of commissions, furthermore, have been established, including the National Commission for Women and the Family, demonstrating concerted efforts to address the issue of gender equality in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has made remarkable achievements in expanding access to all, and its gender parity index in school and tertiary participation is the best in Central Asia (OECD, 2017). Yet, female students in Kazakhstan continue to be overrepresented in traditional areas of study and underrepresented in science and technology-related fields (OECD, 2017). The segregation of students in particular areas of study produces gendered labor outcomes resulting in the concentration of women in feminized occupations with a high prevalence of low wages. The gendered labor outcomes and career choices in Kazakhstan are linked to expected gender roles and unequal power relations (OECD, 2017).
To respond to the government’s agenda on gender equality, higher education institutions established centers and institutions on gender research. In 2016, 60 elective courses on gender equality were introduced in wide-ranging disciplines across 38 higher educational institutions, including “Education”, “Humanities,” “Social Science, Business, and Economics.” Among others, these courses include “Gender Policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan,” “Introduction to gender theory,” “Constitutional and legal basis of gender policy,” “Gender and Feminism Studies,” and “Gender Psychology.” However, very little is known about how gender equality is understood or mainstreamed in educational courses in HEIs in Kazakhstan and how these courses are being developed and enacted. The initial phase of the project focused on the analysis of gender curriculum, while the second stage of the project included faculty, higher education institutions leadership, and students’ understanding of gender and gender equality.

Previous research demonstrates that gender-responsive curricula and educational initiatives aiming to interrupt unequal gender relationships influence students’ agency (Bajaj and Pathmarajah’s, 2011). The construction of gender identities via the curriculum and the understanding and learning of students are often mediated by student agency and their multiple identifications, such as socio-economic status, geographical location, home language, religion, race, and age. Bajaj and Pathmarajah’s (2011) study on the differentiated impact of educational initiatives in Zambia and India demonstrates that curriculum innovations focusing on gender equality and human rights brought positive changes in attitudes toward gender amongst students and teachers; however, there were differences among boys and girls; boys tended to enact more “transformative agency” and efficacy when asserting new understandings of gender and gender relations, while for girls, translating a new “sense of equality and respect into agency and action is often encountered with greater retaliation and difficulty” (p.62) due to the structural inequalities within the society which tend to privilege boys over girls. Understanding how educational initiatives are aimed at promoting gender equality received by students is important to tackle gender inequality both in the professional and domestic spheres. Thus, this paper aims to explore 1) students’ understanding of gender and gender equality, 2) how they receive the enacted gender curriculum in their respective schools, and 3) how they enact gender equality in professional and personal spaces.

The paper uses a poststructuralist lens and Butler’s theory of performativity, which views gender as always, a ‘doing’ and is ‘performed’ within pre-existing discourses amidst social regulation (Butler 1990). Gender as performative appeals that gender and sex are socially constructed, and gender is something we enact and do rather than something we are and own. The (re)production of gender identity is a continuous process in everyday life and institutional setting accomplished through actions and words. In other words, gender identity is not essential and biologically determined, but gender performativity both reinforces and is produced by gender norms in society, creating the illusion of a gender binary (Durrani et. al, 2021).

The paper draws on 13 focus group discussions with 59 higher education students, including 50 female and nine male students, both undergraduates and graduates, across nine universities located in South, North, West, and Central Kazakhstan. The questions sought to understand students’ views on gender and gender equality, the most interesting parts/ideas/concepts they learned within the course about gender, how they enacted gender equality in their personal life, whether they experienced resistance from enacting gender equality and how did their gender practices change in their everyday life after the gender-focused courses.

The collected data is at the stage of the analysis, and differences among the views of students will be explored as the analysis goes in–depth; however, preliminary findings suggest that students acknowledge the strict gender boundaries within society and are able to challenge and alter the existing gender norms and behaviors; nonetheless, there are instances where university curriculum and teachers entrench prevalent gender stereotypes leaving little spaces for students to defy the reproduction of unequal gender relationships. The paper will discuss the implications for advancing, reimagining, and reinvigorating gender mainstreaming in HEIs in Kazakhstan and beyond.

Authors

• Zumrad Kataeva, Nazarbayev University

• Naureen Durrani, Nazarbayev Univeity

• Aliya Olzhayeva, Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education

• Aray Rakhimzhanova, Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education