‘THE FEARFUL KHAN AND THE DELIGHTFUL BEAUTIES’: THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IN SECONDARY SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS IN KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

This paper analyses how secondary school textbooks enact gender in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. As a ‘gender paradox’, with universal literacy and yet a higher representation of women at the tertiary level co-existing with multi-sectoral gaps at the expense of women, Kazakhstan offers an interesting context to empirically investigate the taken for granted relationship between education, gender equality and sustainable development. Poststructuralist discursive analysis is complemented with non-discursive methods to illuminate how textbooks entrench gender power relations, construct dominant masculinities and enact emphasised femininities, producing gender hierarchies and naturalising gendered national belonging. Possibilities for transforming gender relations in and through education are discussed.....