“Six months ago, 18-year-old Raveena Mehto spent all her free time helping her mother with chores and cooking in their mud house in Bihar’s Thakurganj village. Today, she’s shifted from curries to coding and dreams of moving to Bengaluru to work for a big tech company.
She’s one of 67 young women who left their homes in May to study coding at the newly opened School of Programming, Kishanganj, Bihar…
The School of Programming has started a quiet revolution in Kishanganj. NavGurukul has eight other such centres including in Raipur, Dantewada and Dharmshala. Daughters of labourers and farmers are becoming software engineers, moving to big cities, and earning Rs 20,000-25,000 per month, far surpassing the average family income of Rs 10,000. Women from Bihar who are now working in Bengaluru and Kolkata have become role models—voices of change, code and careers.
‘Skill development courses are important not only because they raise women’s earning potential but also because they help break social norms and patriarchal culture,’ said Vidya Mahabare, Professor of Economics, Great Lakes Institute of Management. It also raises women’s confidence level and raises their ambition and aspiration levels…
Data shows that more and more women from rural areas [in India] are joining the workforce. The female labour force participation rate has been rising for six years– from 23.3 per cent in 2017-18 to 37 per cent in 2022-23, driven mainly by the rising participation of rural women.”
From ThePrint.