GENDERED DIMENSIONS OF CITIZENSHIP LEARNING: FEMALES UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' LIVED EXPERIENCES IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

This grounded theory study examines the gender dimension of citizenship learning in Pakistani universities. This study relies on in-depth interviews with 24 female students from two public universities in Punjab to explain how women construct citizenship identities in patriarchal families, gender ideologies popularized by religion, culture, and legal policies. Systematic open, axial, and selective coding results in data analysis that displays the core category of conditional citizenship navigation as the primary process through which female students acquire the citizenship knowledge and are accommodating, negotiating, or resisting various forms of control over their gender. The results indicate that strategic compliance, selective resistance, and collective organizing are action-interactional strategies employed by female students to pursue citizenship learning in the limited situations. This study shows dynamics of universities as paradoxical spaces that contribute to the development of citizenship awareness while reinstating patriarchies that restrict women’s civic agency. This study makes valuable contribution to the theory of conditional citizenship navigation, which applies to studies on citizenship formation of marginalized groups in the context of structural diverse constraints.