Akhtar Hafeez

For the next seven years, Naushaba lived the life expected of her — raising three children, managing household chores, stretching her husband’s meagre income to feed the family. But she watched. She saw women die in childbirth from preventable complications. She saw girls pulled out of school at puberty. She saw potential extinguished by poverty and tradition.

In 2027, Naushaba Roonjho intends to do something almost unthinkable for a woman from her conservative Sindhi village: to run for political office against entrenched male politicians. It’s a remarkable ambition for a 33-year-old who, less than a decade ago, was thrown out of her family home for the simple act of working outside it. But for Naushaba, running for office is the logical culmination of a journey that began with a single act of defiance — sitting for her matriculation exam when no woman from her community had ever done so before. Shaikh Soomar village sits 10 kilometers from the town of Jhirrak, and is a collection of mud-brick houses where most girls’ education ends at primary school — if it begins at all. Naushaba attended the village school until fifth grade before, like most girls of the conservative Roonjho community, her studies were abruptly halted.