‘Seeking a break from home’: investigating women’s college experiences in rural Mewat, India

ABSTRACT

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 career aspirations. While the state has attempted to correct this by building new colleges, this paper explores how women experience and navigate these college spaces. Using a critical feminist lens, it seeks to understand the social and cultural possibilities that college life and higher education have in their lives. Findings suggest that while there are major restrictions on social agency within their everyday life, college emerges as a liminal space that provides an ‘escape’. The college space for these women offers possible pathways of imagination, dialogue, solidarity and support, all forming the complex matrix of their future possibilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FLAME University [Grant Number: 2018-579].

Notes on contributors

Ravikant Kisana

Ravikant Kisana is currently an Assistant Professor at FLAME University, India. His research interests are in the domains of critical caste studies and culture studies.

Shubhda Arora

Shubhda Arora is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, India. Her research interests are in critical management studies, organizational inequalities and gender studies.