Axis A7 · scored on 113 books
Gender conservatism
Does a girl reading this book see anyone like herself doing anything?
Scored on presence and on agency, which come apart: a book can mention women often and grant them nothing to decide. The corpus-wide result on this axis is the study's most consistent finding.
How the five bands are defined
Fixed before any book was read. A score without cited evidence is not a score.
| Score | Operational test |
|---|---|
| 1 | Women as agents across roles, including intellectual and professional. |
| 2 | Women as agents in several roles. |
| 3 | Women present, mostly commemorative or domestic. |
| 4 | Women present but without agency. |
| 5 | Women largely absent, or roles prescriptively bounded. |
Board means English-medium only
Urdu and Sindhi material is theme-grade under this project's evidence rules and is excluded from every mean. Means over small n are shown with their n and should not be quoted without it.
| Board | Mean | n | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal | 3.30 | 10 | |
| Sindh | 3.53 | 17 | |
| Balochistan | 3.80 | 20 | |
| Punjab | 4.18 | 22 | |
| Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | 4.25 | 16 |
Lowest is Federal (3.30), highest is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (4.25). A gap this size may be an artefact of curriculum vintage rather than province — the synthesis separates the two.
Distribution across the corpus
| Score | Books | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | |
| 2 | 11 | |
| 3 | 23 | |
| 4 | 38 | |
| 5 | 40 |
Poles are descriptive, not evaluative. A high score is a measured property of a text, not a verdict on a board, an author or a teacher.
Books at the top of this axis
| Score | Book | Board | Class | Vintage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Geography - Grade 6 | Balochistan | 6 | National Curriculum 2022-23 |
| 5 | 6th Class History English Medium Text Book by BTBB | Balochistan | 6 | National Curriculum 2022-23 |
| 5 | Geography - Grade 7 | Balochistan | 7 | National Curriculum 2022-23 |
| 5 | 7th Class History (EM) Text Book by Balochistan Board | Balochistan | 7 | National Curriculum 2022-23 |
| 5 | Geography - Grade 8 | Balochistan | 8 | National Curriculum 2022-23 |
| 5 | Chemistry - Grade 9 | Balochistan | 9 | National Curriculum 2022-23 |
Books at the bottom
| Score | Book | Board | Class | Vintage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Science VII (2020-21) | Sindh | 7 | National Curriculum 2006 |
| 2 | My English IX (2026) | Sindh | 9 | National Curriculum 2006 |
| 2 | Biology IX (2020-21) | Sindh | 9 | National Curriculum 2006 |
| 2 | Social Studies VII (2020-21) | Sindh | 7 | Sindh Curriculum 2015 |
| 2 | Social Studies VI (2020-21) | Sindh | 6 | Sindh Curriculum 2015 |
| 2 | 9th Class Pakistan Studies (UM) PDF Textbook by Punjab Board | Punjab | 9 | SNC 2022 |
Where this axis is weakest
It is scored on 113 of 167 current books. Coverage is uneven by design: a lens reads the books where its question is live, so a science volume may carry three axis scores and a Pakistan Studies volume seven. That means board means on this axis rest on different books from board means on another, and the two are not interchangeable. The full per-book tables, with page-cited evidence for every score, are in the gender lens report.