Gender bias in the Sindhi Language Pre-primary Government School Textbook

Abstract

This article explores the gender representation in the pre-primary sindhi language textbook published by Sindh Textbook Board, Jamshoro, government of Sindh. It focuses on text, illustrations and images. The main focus is on the illustrations since it is a pre-primary textbook and heavily uses the illustration in order to motivate and engage children. This textbook is taught to sindhi medium government primary school children aged four years and five years. The central question is to examine how gender of a male, female and male and female is represented and what roles are assigned to male and female in the text and illustrations and what these roles suggest about the gender dynamics of a Sindhi society. Also, to understand the number and proportion of male and female gender in the pictures. Using the researching framework of ABC and Naila Kabeer’s Gender Analysis frameworks (Kabeer & Subrahmanian, 1996; Kabira & Masinjila, 1997) as used by (Baig, 2020) and Hayat’s (2023) theoretical conceptualization of gender and critical discourse, this articles offers an insight about how significantly the Sindhi language primary school textbooks published by Sindh textbook construct the gendered roles, identities, future prospects, and unequal power dynamics among children and how these textbooks as a form of discourse cement and transfer the gendered knowledge from one generation to another starting from the very early age of their first interaction with the schooling system of Sindh at the age of four years.