Empowering young women to enter higher education

The recent suicides by young women students in Balasore, Noida and Kharagpur underscore the critical shortcomings in the ecosystem designed to protect and support female students, ultimately undermining public trust in the effectiveness of gender equity initiatives.

- Lalita Panicker

“Young women in India, especially from underprivileged backgrounds, face many challenges in their pursuit of higher education. Beyond the obvious struggles like money and society's ‘no’, it’s the daily battles that wear them down. They juggle housework and caregiving. Getting to college means risking unsafe buses. There is pressure on them for early marriage. And then there isa crippling feeling of inadequacy, lack of self-worth and finally'a lack of agency,” says Dr Kiran Modi, founder and managing trustee of Udayan Care, which works in facilitating higher education for girls. According toa longitudinal study conducted by her organisation in partnership with Duke University, at least one-fifth of the girls surveyed had harboured suicidal tendencies.