A book titled “Ideologies and Power in the Text Books: Reproduction of Gender and Class Hierarchies” authored by Dr. Hazir Ullah, Associate Professor, Deputy Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, International Islamic University Islamabad, has been published by Iqbal International Institute for Research and Dialogue (IRD).
Dr. Hazir Ullah, is an Associate Professor at university who is a budding intellectual and erudite scholar of Sociology. The book highlights the fact that the national curriculum and textbook knowledge taught in public schools holds little relevance to the complexities of life in the twenty-first century for students of public schools. Analyzing gender hierarchies, the book points out that the new textbooks prepared under the curriculum reform are still embedded with gender stereotypes; as such, the dominance afforded to masculinity and ‘male knowledge’ continues to be presented as the only “objective” and “value free knowledge” which is in turn naturalizes and legitimizes male super-ordination and female subordination in the wider society. The book asserts that school textbooks ought to be used as active and generative sites for creating gender equality through the portrayal of females and males in variety of situations and professions.