Freedom , Trust on your Daughters, Story of Hope
I got married during the last semester of my degree in MS Zoology. I was marrying on the condition that I would be allowed to take my final exams after marriage, but when the time came, my in-laws refused to allow me. My husband and I were dependent upon his older brother as their parents had passed away, but later, he separated his family from us and stopped all the financial support. Neither my husband nor I had any job and we had a child by then too. My father ended up bringing me to live with him for six months to finish my degree so that I could get a job later to support my family. If he hadn’t done that, we would have starved. Afterwards, everywhere I applied for job refused to accept me because of the long gap in the completion of my degree. I ended up teaching at a small school in Tharparkar and giving home tuition in the evening, while my husband worked as a guard at a company.
Initially, my husband and my in-laws did not support my decision to come here to work but I remained firm. I made a life for myself because I was able to complete my degree. But it is a custom in my community that girls are not allowed to study further than 5th grade. Parents do not want to invest in their daughters because even if they do acquire higher education, the only people benefiting from that would be the in-laws. I wish to change this mindset of the parents. I have started small but have tried to convince my uncles to allow their daughters to study. It’s one step at a time, and even now, I’m answerable to my in-laws for all my activities. I do not aim for too far, I just want girls to be able to have enough education to support themselves and their children and not be dependent on others for their basic necessities.
Source : Hop (Fb page )
