Gender Ideology and Inequality in Pakistani English Textbooks: A Critical Discourse Analysis within the South Asian Educational Context

Abstract

The paper is a critical case study of a lesson that was chosen, Gender Inequality and Implications, contained in one of the Grade 12 English textbooks published by the Khyber Pakhtunkhaw (KPK) Federal Board. The lesson is discussed as a critical case since it offers a strategic position in studying how patriarchal ideologies are discursively constructed, even in the material that is allegedly discussing inequality. The work examines language, images, and narrative patterns in the work through the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), or rather the model of Critical Language Studies formulated by Fairclough. According to the findings, women, as opposed to men, are largely depicted as emotional, submissive, and morally obligated. Institutionalised gender inequality recreates these representations and normalizes patriarchs of power relations in education. This paper states that the concepts of patriarchy are still perpetuated by the Pakistani education systems and needs to be changed to gender-sensitive curriculums that would encourage equal representation and social consciousness.