Mainstream education, particularly at the primary and secondary school level, remained a huge blind spot by womens' groups. Few attempts have been made to turn the gaze of feminist researchers and scholars towards a site that contributes critically to the historical ongoing construction and reconstruction of gender: The text-book.
What is taught in schools? How it is structured? What strategies are employed in mainstream textbooks to construct and convey ideas about femininity and masculinity? In what ways do school textbooks exclude/invisibilise not just women but other collectivities? What agency is granted to those who are perceived as powerless? How does this agency fulfill the needs and anxieties of the historical moment in which it is located? These are some of the many questions that need to be addressed in the context of the school curriculum.
This critique of government and privately published textbooks across five states, from a perspective that intersects gender with other frameworks of caste, religion, class and nation, not only adds to the body of knowledge but contributes vital inputs in thinking about alternatives. It looks at how the issue of gender intersects with caste, class and religion in the context of the imagined political community called the Indian nation. It foregrounds the cultural and ideological frameworks that inform the architecture of the textbooks in terms of content, `knowledge’ and supposed `national’ values.
PARTICIPANTS
'Through the Gender Lens' was a collaborative study. The participating states - Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi - were selected keeping in mind the political context, developments in education and the vibrancy and academic rigour of the Women’s Studies departments. As education is a state subject, the political context becomes important in order to analyse how the gender question and its intersectionalities have been dealt with by states presently espousing different political ideologies and with different political histories. The participatory states represent this variety.
Tamil Nadu: Tara Books (educational research unit) Coordinating researchers: V. Geetha, Salai Selvam
Gujarat: Baroda Women’s Studies Department. Coordinating researcher: Nandini Manjrekar
West Bengal: Jadavpur School of Women’s Studies. Coordinating researcher: Paromita Chakravarti
Uttar Pradesh: Women’s Studies unit, Lucknow University. Coordinating researchers: Dr Rooprekha Verma
Delhi: Nirantar
Advisors
Dr Krishna Kumar
Dr Farida Khan
Dr Uma Chakravarti
Dr Sarada Balagopal
METHODOLOGY
The analysis of the textbooks combines methods of `content analysis’ and close textual reading. Given the focus on the interrelationship between gender, on the one hand, and nation and other related identities on the other, the content analysis is theoretically-oriented rather than quantitative, allowing us to explore questions that extend beyond quantitative elements like how many chapters in a book concern women, how frequently they are represented, etc.
An analytical structure was developed to study the inter-relationship between gender and nation, and recording units or tables were created to map a textbook, according to different rubrics of analysis – like the nation, body, violence, tradition and modernity, gender and nature. In addition to theoretical content analysis, therefore, the study also involves close textual reading of books. Each state team would look at how similar events, accounts or characters are described. The textual readings would also create the possibility of looking at, in-depth, the strategies and tools used to stereotype, mythologise and nationalize different identities, not just gender identities.
FINDINGS
Reports are in the final stages of production and will be available online soon.
