In this study I challenge the uncritical use of the long held dictum of the development discourse that education empowers women. From a post-structuralist feminist position I show that in its current state the educational discourse in Pakistan actually disempowers women. This discourse constitutes gendered identities and positions them in a way that exacerbates and intensifies inequalities between men and women. Gendered constitution and positioning of subjects also regulates the relationship between the subjects and the state in such a way that women and minorities are excluded from the citizenship realm. / Educational discourse in Pakistan is the premier site where meanings of signs such as woman, man, mother, father, patriot, nationalist, etc., are gendered and fixed. It also provides the techniques of discipline and surveillance for naturalization of meaning and normalization of subjects. Urdu and social studies curricula and textbooks for classes 1-8 and 3-8 respectively constitute subjects and subjectivities and relations among them by means such as inclusion and exclusion from the text, hierarchization of the meanings ascribed to the subjects, normalization of the ascribed meanings (so that subjects stop questioning the meaning fixation), totalization (where all theoretical and explanatory differences are obfuscated), and classification of subjects in terms of binary opposites where one is superior to the other. / As a result of such gendered subjectivity constitution and subject positioning, women in Pakistan have been subjected to the worst kind of social, political, economic and juridical discrimination. However, Pakistani women have refused to be passive victims. They have used their agency to put up a spirited resistance against the unequal citizenship status and rights resulting from the gendered subjectivity constitution and subject positioning. In order to make education more meaningful and empowering for the women of Pakistan it is imperative that both women's groups as well as the educational policy makers understand the working and dynamics of the educational discourse in conjunction with the judicial and economic discourses and those of the state and the media. It is only from within the discourses that a change can be brought about.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85025 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Naseem, Muhammad Ayaz |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Integrated Studies in Education.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002173848, proquestno: AAINR06331, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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