Not every educational journey begins with a grand plan. For Latha, education meant being the first to cross a line no girl in her family had crossed before. She grew up in rural India, where school was a 30-minute walk away and resources were limited. In her community, girls usually stopped studying after school. Latha did not. Encouraged by her parents and a mathematics teacher after Class X, she continued, despite financial strain and long travel to college. A sports scholarship later helped ease the burden. “Girls usually stopped studying after school. I’m the first girl in my family to attend college,” she says. Now pursuing an MA in Public Policy, she hopes to work in sports marketing or event management.
For Unnati Jain, the path was shaped by curiosity. A final-year BTech student in Electronics and Communication Engineering, she says science interested her from childhood, with semiconductors eventually drawing her in through their complexity and design possibilities. In a class of around 60 students, 15 to 18 are girls, but Unnati says that has not translated into bias. As more women enter STEM spaces, she believes interest in such fields must be encouraged without pressure. “I think it should come naturally. It cannot be forced,” she notes. She is now preparing to pursue a Master’s in the same field.
Kaveri (name changed) carries a different story. Before she entered the civil services, education was less a ladder than a way of holding her ground. There were years when family pressure, expectations around marriage, and the sheer weight of circumstance could easily have closed in on her future. Instead, she kept studying and kept moving through setbacks. “Every exam I cleared gave me a little more space to choose my own life,” she said. That persistence eventually carried her into the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). Looking back, she sees education not simply as qualification, but as protection. “Education was the one thing nobody could take away from me,” she emphasises.
Their journeys show that for many girls, education is not just about careers. It translates to access, direction, and, sometimes, the means to keep a future open.