The Gendered Classroom: Masculinity and Femininity in Pakistani Universities

Abstract

Our gendering experiences begin with our birth. The formal educational gendering process begins the moment we enter school and continue throughout our educational journey. Sitting in the same classroom, reading the same books, listening to the same teachers at the same time, boys and girls have different experiences. Giving close attention to the temporal, physical/embodied and discursive dimensions of classroom life and relations in Pakistan, I highlight the extent to which the university classroom functions as gendered space in which masculinity and femininity are exhibited by young men and women (students). The data for the paper comes from in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with universities' teachers, focus group discussion with students and classroom observation. Foucauldian discourse analysis will be employed as a methodological and theoretical tool to unpack a number of concerns including the constitutive and constituted nature of teachers' and students' gendered practice and ideology. By employing discourse analysis, I take into account teachers ' and students' classroom practices (sitting, walking and talking) as powerful discourses and analyse how these construct frameworks of meaning that define categories and specify domains of what can be said and done. The study, as stated earlier, attempts to delineate how the gendered practices in the classroom contribute to the construction of gendered identities, perpetuation of gendered power structure and disciplining young men and women as gendered individuals. It is pertinent to mention here that some of the study findings challenge the popular assertion regarding 'gendered experience' unpacked by feminist research in the global north.

Gênero e Educação Infantil: uma revisão sistemática das produções brasileiras

“…Dos seis estudos, quatro (7,41,43,45) explicitaram que as diferenças entre meninos e meninas estavam relacionadas a estímulos do ambiente e a relações e processos familiares, e não, às diferenças biológicas. 4 -Construção de sentidos sobre feminilidades e masculinidades (22,28,34,48,54) -Essa categoria visou compreender como são construídas as diferentes feminilidades e masculinidades, visto que as instituições educacionais, principalmente no âmbito da sala de aula, ensinam às meninas e aos meninos papéis sociais, como agir em sociedade e até mesmo quais status lhes cabem (ULLAH; KHAN, 2018). Os resultados do estudo também apresentaram que, além de a inclusão da temática gênero ser algo recente nas leis e nos parâmetros curriculares, é abordada sob uma perspectiva submissa ligada a valores e a direitos.…”

Classroom Environment, Teacher, and Girl Students’ Learning Skills

“…The importance of classroom interaction between teachers and students and among peers has stressed sociologists of education to study classroom with sociological lens. "Classroom became one of the key areas of research for educational sociologists, especially in 1980s" (Ullah & Khan, 2018). Since 1980s, a considerable number of studies have been carried out on school, college, and university classrooms (Burgess & Parker, 1999;Delamont, 1981;Hirschy & Wilson, 2002).…”

“…Despite considerable studies on classroom across societies, studying factors that advance or hinder students learning in general and girls' learning in particular have received very little attention in Pakistan. The few studies carried out in Pakistani context dominantly focus on university classroom (Ullah & Khan, 2018;Ullah & Skelton, 2016). This study, thus, attempts to examine classroom environment and girls learning skills in girls' high schools in Pakistan.…”