by Rabbia Aslam and Shaqiaz Khan
In this blog, we are discussing how scholars and students within the field of gender studies are targeted, discredited and treated as if they are not part of objective knowledge production processes within academia. The objection is that Women and Gender Studies (WGS) is not a ‘real’ discipline because it allegedly lacks objectivity and facts. In this blog, our focus is on two recent examples within one of the provinces of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtoon Khawa (KPK), where efforts have been made to scrutinize or halt degree programs in Gender Studies and silence researchers, lecturers and activists.
Gender Studies as an interdisciplinary field of academic study confronts a double whammy of a persistent urgency of the field amidst heightened risk for its scholars and students. As a result, there is a pressing need for collaboration and solidarity among scholars working in Gender Studies to safeguard academic freedom for high quality research and education, foster inclusive discourse, and strengthen advocacy efforts in the face of growing challenges. Rooted in the feminist activism in the late 1960s, Gender Studies uniquely brings together theory, vision, and action in its examination of the role of gender in all facets of society and the resulting inequalities and power differences (Aslam and Khan 2023). To date, the societal relevance of the discipline of Gender Studies remains even more urgent in our context because Pakistan ranks second- last in the global gender equality index.
This current dearth of a context-sensitive knowledge production in Gender Studies is aggravated by the global rise of an anti-gender rights movement as “the transnational constellation of actors working to preserve the heteropatriarchal sex and gender power hierarchy in all areas of social, political, economic, and cultural life” (McEwen and Narayanaswamy 2023: 4).
Zooming in on Pakistan, a country characterized by ‘classic patriarchy’ (Kandiyoti 1988) and persistently at the bottom of global rankings of gender equality (World Economic Forum 2024), gives reason for even more concern. Incidents of gender-based violence increased in 2023 compared to 2022, including abductions, (gang)rape and domestic violence experienced by women. Transphobia is on the rise as reflected in the Federal Shariat Court’s declaring sections of the historic Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 in violation of Islamic law, even as transgender persons continue to face violence and discrimination (Riaz and Awan 2023, Tripathi et al. 2025). State repression, including the obstruction of the massive annual Aurat [women’s] marches on International Women’s Day, has further hindered rather than supported efforts to create gender-just environments (HRCP 2024).
A significant barrier stands in the way of utilizing Gender Studies’ ability to combat gender-based discrimination and the Northern bias of the field. Not unlike other academic fields in the social sciences and humanities, Gender Studies curricula are still dominated by theorizing grounded in contexts of the global North (Connell 2014, Mohanty 1988). This contrasts with Gender Studies’ prominent assertion that gender regimes always intersect with local contexts and histories to produce specific forms of gendered structures and inequalities in society (Bose 2015). For students in global South contexts like Pakistan, this creates the impression of an academic discipline that is antagonistic to students’ culture dismissive of their lived realities and struggles, making it harder for them to engage with and benefit from such academic frameworks. Therefore, for an effective implementation of gender equality agendas, an indigenous understanding of gender perspectives is crucial (Aslam and Khan 2023: 1-2)
In Pakistan, state bodies have long expected Gender Studies to contribute to fields firmly rooted in patriarchal assumptions about gender relations such as home management studies (Aslam 2024: 219). More recently, a petition was filed by a lawyer in the Lahore High Court in 2020, questioning the existence of Gender Studies at universities across Pakistan. It was directed toward higher education commission of Pakistan to clarify the queries related to the field of Gender Studies. The petition requested the State of Pakistan to ban the academic discipline, arguing that it conflicts with the religious and cultural values of Pakistan (Aslam 2024: 210). On university campuses, the involvement of transgender persons as members of faculty also generally and in teaching Gender Studies is actively being discouraged. This results in a situation in which gender-nonconforming persons are rarely involved in academic analyses, and also more generally including the gender-based human rights violations they experience. This invisibilization also cements binary understandings of gender, despite gender variant people having been an integral part of South Asian cultures for centuries (Hussain 2019). Moreover, in Pakistan gender studies scholars are framed, discredited, and policed as promoting a Western agenda (Aslam 2024, Kolluoglu 2024).
Grasping of transformative change has always been hard in heteropatriarchal societies. Gender studies as a discipline that is offering provocative thinking, providing room to think out of box, and teaching feminist thoughts and asking critical question is under threat. Gender Studies confronted with backlash in several ways in different societies across the globe. In our society, where women are already living under many extreme conditions, subjects like Gender Studies are a ray of hope.
The following words belong to a teacher, who has taught in a department of gender studies at one of the colleges at (Khyber Pakhtoon Khawa province). He is sharing personal experiences:
I have been teaching in the department of gender studies for more than a year which is made up of two semesters in total. My experience there has been various. Regarding students, I got a positive and constructive response, and I saw them building on their own, but the behavior of official staff including principal and other teaching staff was harsh and unfair. I saw them with turned faces and having seen them with personal grudges they had for the department. In their eyes, the department of gender studies propagates un-Islamic contents and making students away from traditions, culture, and other norms. For them, seeing the department boosting is indigestible. Officials always sidelines the students of gender studies just because of their identity as students of gender studies. I remember once we arranged drawing classrooms with art on 8th March. Upon that, we have gotten severe responses from official staff. A student’s drawing of a girl without a veil became the center of attention. Officials came and redrawn the picture and instructed students to cover their head because it is against our culture and religion. Even though I tried to invite a guest speaker, I received unwelcoming response. I was disappointed when I saw teachers disrespectful to students of gender studies and treated them like they were doing something illegal and unacceptable. I saw teachers laughing at the students of gender studies. So, the overall environment seemed to me unfair for the growth and prosperity of the department of Gender studies. Despite all unfair behavior by the official staff and teachers, students of Gender make their survival and are happy upon their choice that they chose this field of study.
Gender Studies is one of the relatively few departments that discuss gender as open category , even though women are receiving instruction on morality and their responsibilities from their homes to their workplaces, colleges, and universities. The fight for gender justice is currently being deliberately thwarted by some right-wing extremist organizations. Their purported dedication to women’s emancipation is essentially token gestures that do not seriously interfere with patriarchal power structures. Given that feminist research challenges long-standing structures of privilege, it is therefore not surprising that the area of women’s and Gender Studies encounters opposition. Deeply conservative thinkers who have long aimed to impede the emancipation and social growth of our nation’s underprivileged communities are driving and escalating the current pushback.
There is a growing momentum within Pakistan by some institutions to undermine and discredit gender studies as a discipline. This is evident in the persistent shortage of qualified teaching faculty within gender studies departments. For example, at one of the colleges in (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), which offers an affordable Bachelor’s degree in gender studies, efforts appear to be underway to phase out the subject entirely. The administration has implemented a ground-based plan to achieve this: no specialized faculty members are retained, and instead of recruiting subject experts, non-specialized teachers are appointed merely to fill teaching positions. This approach neglects the students’ educational needs and undermines the quality of teaching. A major concern is the absence of multidisciplinary faculty capable of supervising student thesis projects, leaving students to suffer the consequences most acutely. The bachelor degree in gender studies is designed to be modern and progressive, particularly for social science students who engage with current social issues and are encouraged to take action within their capacities. However, due to administrative and bureaucratic neglect, education in gender studies is becoming an unbearable burden rather than an empowering experience at few places in Pakistan.
Our urgent call is that Gender Studies must be continued as academic field since it is the only field that teaches individuals, especially those who belong to sexual and gender minorities, their rights, how to obtain them, and how to live honorably and with dignity. Besides, Gender Studies graduates lack clarity about the relevance of the academic field for their transition into the labour market. Experienced as transformative at the personal level, there are uncertainties regarding the marketability of a Gender Studies degree in Pakistan beyond the development sector (Ali and Aslam 2024: iii) relates the low share of students enrolled in Gender Studies between 2008 and 2020 as their first choice to the “systemic realities of the neoliberal economic order, where education is valued on its market and commercial basis”.
About the authors
Rabbia Aslam: I am currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, with which I have been associated for more than 15 years. I hold a PhD in Sociology from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and have been a visiting fellow at the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands. My research and teaching areas include violence, sociology of knowledge, sociology of gender, masculinities, bifurcation in the education system, and postcolonial and decolonial thinking in Pakistan. This blog is a reflection of who I am and how I present myself as an educated working-class Pakistani academic from the public sector. As part of our positionality struggles, I always want to write about things that I believe are important to record. Teaching and research on gender issues, in my opinion extend beyond the classrooms.
Shaqiaz Khan: My name is Shaqiaz Khan. I hold MSc and MPhil degrees in Gender Studies. I served as a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Government Postgraduate College, Haripur, and have recently focussed on the following topics: “Depiction of Women in Pashto Proverbs: A Case Study of the Marwat Dialect” and “Neither Funny nor Frivolous: Exploring Men’s Expression in Male Spaces.” Reflecting on my journey, I can say that, having male identity, I had to challenge and deconstruct the patriarchal thoughts and stereotypes I had internalized. Studying and teaching Gender Studies has brought significant changes in my perspective. I have learned to treat every individual equally, without making judgments based on gender.