South Asian society is segregated along gender lines, with well-defined gender roles and expectations. The region has an educational system which focuses on gender as an agenda to make decisions regarding schools and resource allocation (Halai 2002). For education of females, it is observed that in South Asia gender inequality is deeply rooted in the system (UNDP 2010). In this regard, primary level curriculum and policy making has been recognised as significant factors of this prevailing inequality.

This paper will analyse existing gender inequalities in the text books of South Asian countries i.e. India, Nepal and Pakistan. It attempts to explore the areas of gender negativity in existing text books at primary level which leads towards gender inequality in South Asian society. In order to make a comparative analysis of gender stereotyping, content analysis of the stories in national language textbooks from grade 1-5 of the three countries was conducted.

The preliminary findings of the study confirm that gender stereotyping exists in the textbooks of all three countries, but the magnitude of the problem varies. During comparative quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data, it was found that Pakistani textbooks at primary level have the highest degree of gender bias, few incidences were also found in Indian textbooks, but overall Nepali books are more gender sensitive and had the lowest evidence of gender stereotypes. It is important that textbook boards and policy makers address the issue of gender blindness in the curricula so that books are gender neutral.

References:

Halai, A. (ed.) 2007, Boys are Better Mathematicians: Gender Issues from Mathematics Classrooms in Pakistan, Oxford University Press, Karachi.

UNDP 2010, UNDP Human Development Report 2010, United Nations Development Programme, 

<http://hdr.undp.org/en/> accessed 3 September 2012.