"When Naushaba Roonjho became the first girl anyone in her district knew to have passed Pakistan's national secondary school exam, the news was not celebrated. At home, in her village of Sheikh Soomar in southern Sindh, her father told her: This is enough, you don't need to study more. You should stay at home now. It was 2010 and Roonjho was 17; within weeks she was married, to Muhammad Uris, a labourer."
"Although, like all the girls in Thatta district, she had left school after primary, Roonjho had kept up her studies independently. People mocked me, Roonjho says. They said girls don't need education and get spoiled if they study. My parents stopped talking to me for two years. They didn't accept that I wanted to study or become something in life."
Naushaba Roonjho passed Pakistan's national secondary school exam despite leaving formal schooling after primary. Her father insisted she stop studying and she married at 17. She continued self-study, later joined a national rural development programme as a community health worker, and faced social stigma and family estrangement for working publicly. In 2019 family conflict forced her and her husband to leave the parental home; they built a single-room house with savings. She led vaccination drives and hygiene initiatives, identified gaps such as lack of handwashing, absence of midwives, and limited awareness of childbirth danger signs, contributing to efforts to reduce maternal mortality.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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