Rethinking Women’s Political Inequality: Gendered Political Socialization in South Asian Textbooks

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 2) Education, Socialization, and Academic Pathways

Abstract

This study examines how women’s political inequality is socially produced through school curricula in South Asia. Drawing on comparative content analysis of grade 9 English language textbooks from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, I analyze gendered centrality, institutional legitimacy, and aspirational framing in both text and pictorial content. The findings reveal a consistent cross-national pattern. Quantitative analysis shows female representation remains consistently lower than male representation in leading roles, narrative centrality, and public-facing activities. In India, for instance, women account for only six percent of leading characters. In Pakistan, women comprise just 15 percent of story-centered narratives. Even in Bangladesh, which demonstrates comparatively higher inclusion, male characters dominate key institutional and leadership positions. Qualitative analysis further demonstrates that political leadership roles are overwhelmingly associated with men across these contexts, reinforcing institutional authority and civic heroism. Titles such as Kings, Presidents, Governors, Statesmen, and Imams are assigned exclusively to male figures. By contrast, femininity is moralized and renationalized. Women appear as anxious mothers, cautious sisters, or nurturing teachers. None of the textbooks centers women as routine holders of political power. I argue that textbooks function as sites of gendered political misrecognition, normalizing masculine authority while constraining feminine political imagination. Through repetition across textual and visual content, textbooks normalize masculine authority and render female leadership exceptional rather than routine. By anchoring on textbook production in Afghanistan during pre-Taliban peacetime, I argue that gender socialization in textbooks in these countries is not simply a function of religious conservativism; it survives liberal reform, international intervention, and transnational gender advocacy. In a global context marked by the re-domestication of women, the curricular narrative does not merely reflect inequality but participates in its reproduction. I end the paper by drawing on existing scholarships to underscore ways to achieve equitable socialization within schooling settings.

Author

• Md Kamrul Islam, University of Illinois at Chicago