Indian Women and the Promise of Higher Education: An Intersection of Dreams, Expectations and Negotiations During Lockdown

The imagination and dreams of women learners became desperate and diffused when they had to attend online classes due to the outbreak of pandemic COVID-19. The unintended shift of learning space from a university space to a home space made a significant shift in the lives of women learners. Space not only embodies a physical resource in the form of a learning environment but offers an array of resources, i.e., opportunities, leisure time, and social interaction. These resources play a vital role in women’s higher education. In this backdrop, an attempt has been made to understand the expectations, negotiations, and realization of first-generation women students in higher education. The present study is an exploration of women student’s expectations, negotiations, and realizations they made when educational institutions were closed (March–June 2020 and November 2020–February 2021) and academic engagement was carried out in home spaces. The researcher collected the responses of women students from the Central University of Himachal Pradesh in an open-ended questionnaire and focused group interview with postgraduate women participants from different departments of the university. The questions were grouped on two broad themes; firstly, women learners and their families’ perception of higher education followed by their negotiation and realization of higher education through online mode.