Fostering Gender Literacy Through social media: English Study Program Students’ Experiences as Digital Content Creators and Gender Advocates in Islamic Higher Education

Abstract

This study examines the effectiveness of digital feminist pedagogy in improving gender literacy among students at Islamic higher education institutions, emphasizing quantitative learning results and qualitative forms of creative expression. The study implements a convergent mixed-methods approach based on data from 56 students at two Islamic universities in Medan (private and state university), Indonesia. A validated 40-item Gender Literacy Assessment was conducted before and after an eight-week digital feminist pedagogy intervention, accompanied by multimodal discourse analysis of 30 created by students’ digital campaigns. The findings indicate that both institutions showed statistically significant enhancements in gender literacy scores with substantial impact sizes. Qualitative analysis showed that students proficiently produced transformative digital content that challenges gender norms through the following key competencies: transforming abstract gender equality concepts into comprehensible visual narratives, employing diverse digital media formats to captivate varied audiences, and integrating local cultural contexts with global feminist perspectives. Culturally integrated digital advertising generated 261% greater engagement than universal strategies, underscoring the essential role of cultural adaptation in pedagogical efficacy. These findings highlight the efficacy of engaging students as content creators in gender equality education and illustrate that digital feminist pedagogy may effectively improve gender literacy in Islamic higher education settings while maintaining cultural-religious norms. This study contributes to the increasing data advocating for the integration of feminist pedagogy in higher education to empower students as agents of gender literacy and promote inclusive social change in conservative educational environments.