This paper reports on the second stage of a project aiming to explore the ways the Government of Kazakhstan’s policy of mainstreaming gender in higher education institutions (HEIs) is enacted on the ground and to what effect. Kazakhstan has initiated the policy of gender mainstreaming in HEIs to fulfill its commitment to global gender equality initiatives, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Declaration on advancing women’s rights, and Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) including SDG 4 (Education) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality). Kazakhstan has also promulgated legislation to promote gender equality, including the Law on Equal Rights and Opportunities and the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence. The National Gender Equality Strategy for 2006 - 2016 aimed to ensure gender issues are embedded into the economic, social, and political spheres of the country. The ‘Concept on Family and Gender Policy for 2030’ includes, among other issues, important action plans to reduce stereotypes in education and employment and combat violence against women. A number of commissions, furthermore, have been established, including the National Commission for Women and the Family, demonstrating concerted efforts to address the issue of gender equality in Kazakhstan as an active member of the Bologna Process.  

To respond to the government’s agenda on gender equality, higher education institutions established centers and institutions on gender research. In 2016, in 38 higher educational institutions, 60 elective courses on gender equality were introduced in wide-ranging disciplines, including “Education”, “Humanities”, “Law”, “Social Science, Business and Economics”. However, very little is known about how gender equality is understood or mainstreamed in educational courses in HEIs in Kazakhstan and how these courses are being developed and enacted. 

According to Rees (1998), gender mainstreaming is the systematic integration of equal opportunities into organizations and cultures and into all programs, policies, and practices. However, there is a concern that policy commitments to gender fade during implementation and that the nature of pre-existing gender regimes shapes the implementation of gender mainstreaming in different countries (Morley, 2007). Moreover, recent research on gender equality highlights teachers and faculty members as an important starting point for promoting gender equality as teachers’ gender beliefs and educational practices influence students’ gender identities and students’ beliefs on gender and gender equality (Gunderson et al., 2012; Heyder, 2015). In addition, when education explicitly aims to promote gender equality through curriculum and textbooks, teacher pedagogy and training in gender sensitivity, gender balance in the teaching workforce and leadership positions, and transformation in the culture of school and leadership, it may open up possibilities for gender equality (Durrani et al., 2017). 

This paper aims to explore faculty members’ understanding of gender issues in the context of Kazakhstan and their role in promoting gender equality in and through education. More specifically, the research seeks to understand how higher education faculty members negotiate the meaning of gender equality and how they enact gender mainstreaming courses/materials through their pedagogy and assessment methods. The paper uses a poststructuralist lens and Butler’s theory of performativity, which views gender as always, a ‘doing’ and is ‘performed’ within pre-existing discourses amidst social regulation (Butler 1990). Gender as performative appeals that gender and sex are socially constructed and gender is something we enact and do rather than something we are and own. The (re)production of gender identity is a continuous process in everyday life and institutional setting. In other words, gender identity is not essential and biologically determined, but gender performativity both reinforces and is produced by gender norms in society, creating the illusion of gender binary (Durrani et. al, 2021). 

The first stage of the research project focused on the analysis of the gender courses curriculum, which included 21 syllabi of gender courses from 17 higher education institutions in Kazakhstan. The study centered on how gender and gender equality are framed within the curriculum and how these framings are shaped by or contradict the global and national gender equality policies and discourses. Our findings demonstrate that gender and gender equality are framed around documents, actions, and gender policies initiated by the Kazakhstani government; however, the curriculum entrenches gender norms, emphasizing clear boundaries between men and women, male/female, girls/boys. Empowering women means strengthening democracy in Kazakhstan; however, this approach at the same time promotes motherhood as an end-goal for women by presenting women ‘as a gentle, kind and devoted human beings oriented towards being a good wife and mother,’ whereas ‘boys need to be taught how to be resilient, responsible and brave husbands’(Kataeva et al., 2021). In this paper, we present the second stage of the project, which uses a qualitative multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006) and semi-structured online and face-to-face interviews with 17 faculty members, including two male and 15 female members teaching gender courses in 10 higher education institutions located in the South, North, West, and Central Kazakhstan. The questions sought to understand how faculty members understand gender and gender equality and what they think about gender issues in Kazakhstan, higher education and their workplace; how they approach their courses in terms of curriculum preparation; what teaching and learning materials they use, and what topics they view as more relevant to students; what specific approaches/tasks/activities were useful in actively engaging students with the course materials; and what challenges they face in teaching gender courses.

The collected data is at the stage of the analysis, where differences among the views and practices of faculty members will be explored as the analysis goes in-depth; however, preliminary findings suggest that although faculty members expressed concerns about gender challenges in Kazakhstan, they also largely attributed it to culture and tradition existing within the Kazakhstani society, pointing out that “it will take time to change” and some accepting it as the status quo and “as things should be because of our culture.” Faculty members also claimed higher education institutions as a gender-equal space emphasizing the feminization of teaching and academic profession in Kazakhstan. They also noted a lack of teaching and learning materials and the overall lack of interest in gender courses in higher education, as most of these courses stand as electives and are not offered every semester or every year. We also found that faculty members’ pedagogies and discursive practices are largely aligned with the contradictory curriculum that entrenches the existing gender norms and gender stereotypes (Kataeva et al., 2021). These contradictory positionings within the teaching of gender courses raise various challenges for promoting and mainstreaming gender equality in higher education. The paper will discuss the implications for advancing, reimagining, and reinvigorating gender mainstreaming in HEIs in Kazakhstan and beyond.

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