In 2018, Nuh, barely 75 km from India's parliament, was ranked by the Government as the country's most 'backward' district. It is a region fraught with many challenges including endemic poverty and simmering communal tensions, which among other factors have contributed to historically limiting women from pursuing higher education or building…

Gender disparity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in higher education is a matter of concern across the world. Expansion of the higher education sector in the early twenty-first century in India has enabled to bring attitudinal changes in Indian families especially towards females' STEM higher education. The present…

This theoretical research article delves into the necessity of embracing digital pedagogy as a transformative force for girls' education in contemporary India. This study is grounded in three main objectives: (1) assessing the current state of girls' education in India, (2) exploring the potential benefits of digital pedagogy, and (3)…

The gender dimension of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) has intrigued social scientists for a long time. Although in India, women's entry to STEM higher education has been improving over the last few decades, the reality of premier institutions remains broadly unaltered. The current qualitative research was an attempt: (a)…

In contemporary times, the status of Muslim women has become a lens to approach and engage with Muslim societies. Embedded in these narratives is an image of Muslim women as oppressed victims of their patriarchal families and societies. In this article, we focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women from Pakistan and India to examine…

Brigham Young posits that 'If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but you educate a woman, you educate a nation.' Even now, educating a woman is challenging in cultural practices dominated by values and beliefs in the social system. Women in developing countries face significant barriers in accessing education, whereas gender inequality…

Life skills have become the foci of many girls' education initiatives because they are assumed to empower girls to negotiate oppressive gender norms constraining their lives. Often these programmes give a singular attention to gender norms, despite other interlocking oppressive structures and norms. Although postcolonial feminist perspectives in…

Since 2003 a privately funded high school has provided desperately needed education for girls from impoverished families in Lucknow, the capital and largest city in Uttar Pradesh, in northeast India. Urvashi Sahni, the founder of Prerna Girls School, tells the stories of how the school has changed the lives of more than 5,000 girls and their…

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields are considered catalysts for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Yet, particularly for STEM fields, girls and women, for a multitude of social, cultural and psychological reasons, engage and participate at a lower rate than boys and men. This research…

Gender inequalities in educational attainment have attracted considerable attention and this article aims to contribute to our understanding of young women's access to higher education. The article is based on our in-depth interviews with 26 Hindu and Muslim young women attending colleges in urban Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), south India, and…

At any one time, about 300 million children of school going age are not in school. Experience indicates that when schooling is disrupted, whether by a pandemic, a natural disaster or other reasons, not all children return to the classroom. In addition, most countries have growing numbers of young people who have not completed schooling, or not…

This working paper will share the experience of Ashta No Kai (ANK), a grassroots nonprofit the author founded in 1998 in 10 villages in Shirur County, Maharashtra state, India, to promote the empowerment and education of women and girls in rural areas. The paper will, at first, examine the state of education in India including the Indian…

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, "achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls", emphasises the need for "providing women and girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes [which] will fuel sustainable economies and benefit…

This paper attempts to explore the connections between expanding female education and the participation of women in paid employment in Japan, China and India, three of Asia's largest economies. Analysis based on existing data and literature shows that despite the large expansion in educational access in these countries in the last half century,…

The Pardada Pardadi Girls Vocational School (PPGVS) in India was established in 2000 by Virendera (Sam) Singh, a retired U.S. Dupont South Asia department head to address the issue of gender bias in India. According to the school's website, nearly half of India's population is illiterate: males outnumber females two-to-one in literacy and drop-out…