Jira is currently in her third year of medical school. She isinspired by her professors, and hopes to learn from theirexperiences and recommendations. Over the next summer, shealso wants to intern at the infirmary on campus. She wants tostudy further and choose pediatrics as her major next year.

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However, Jira realises that her college facilities aren’t the best— she cannot access publications and the library is not up-todate. She compares her learning opportunities to her friend whowas selected to a prestigious university in Bangkok, and wishesshe had access to the same opportunities.

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Her relationship with her family is strong but as she is lookingto pursue a career that is not very common in her community,she realises that she needs to tread carefully, as a badrelationship with her parents could impact her aspirations.

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She still wonders about whether she is pursuing the rightcareer, and often has second thoughts — what if I want tostart my own family? What if I need to take care of my family?She realises that good job opportunities are at a distance,and is worried that commuting alone could be expensive anddangerous. She wishes there were more female role modelsfrom her community working in science, but also recognisesthat she could be a role model for other women.

Supattra lives with her parents and a younger sister. Her schooling ended after Mathayom 3(9th grade) as her parents could not afford to pay for her education. As they are migrants fromMyanmar, her family does not have Thai citizenship.

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Supattra does most of the housework at home — laundry, sweeping, mopping the floors — butshe doesn’t see this as a gendered burden, rather her responsibility. She wants to be able to earnenough money to support her family, and is always looking for ways to earn income. She is proudthat she does not borrow money from her parents, and this makes her feel like less of a burden.

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Supattra feels restricted by the lack of opportunities in her village compared to the cities. However,because her family does not have citizenship, it is difficult for them to travel outside of the province.As a result, she has never really considered moving away from home to study or work.

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She aspires to one day own the most famous bakery of her village — catering to those from nearbyvillages and towns, and tourists. Currently she and her friend get together on the weekend tobake cakes and prepare candies to sell in their neighbourhood and earn pocket money. Her foodis praised by her friends and neighbours, which has given her more confidence. Her teacher hasadvised her on how she must apply her talent to set up a business near the community centre.

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Supattra wishes that there were more women in business around her from whom she can seekadvice and share her ideas. She attends a weekly English language course hosted in the communitycentre in a nearby village organised by an NGO. She hopes that learning English will help her getmore customers. At the same time, she knows that being stateless, her options are more limitedthan most and that she will have to work with the opportunities available to her.

Nurhayati is 23 years old and lives in Soreang in Kabupaten Bandung with her husband and five year old daughter.After graduating from SMP (junior high school), she had to leave education because her father’s earnings as a daylabourer were low, and the family could not continue to support her. After leaving school she tried to start a businessselling cosmetics, but she couldn’t get it off the ground due to a lack of customers. When she turned 19, two yearsafter getting married, she tried a job working for a business in a market outside of her village. However, the travel andlong hours meant it was hard for her to take care of her one year old daughter and her responsibilities at home.

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Eventually, she started running a business out of the home, cooking and selling snacks. Support from her husband waskey to this: “My husband tasted my mother’s cooking, the snails, and said to me, this is a good business opportunity,not many people sell this kind of delicacy, that I should try to market it, and it turned out people liked it”. Setting up thebusiness from home meant she was able to earn income while running the household. Her husband supports her bydelivering to customers, especially now that he has lost work as a construction worker during the pandemic.

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Nurhayati feels that setting up a business based on what you are good at is the most viable option to support thefamily. “It’s always family first”, she says. She is able to spend time with her daughter and still feeds her from herown hand. Her mother helps her manage the housework and cook for the business. Even though she contributes tofamily income, she believes men are the primary breadwinners. She and her friends agree that as long as you can keepup with your responsibilities as a wife and a mother, it is okay to work. They think that if your husband earns enoughmoney, it’s an option whether you go to work or not, but if he’s not earning much then you need to step up to help.

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Nurhayati’s business is doing well and she uses Facebook and Whatsapp to sell her products. She thinks she has thepotential to grow but she doesn’t know how to access the funds to expand, particularly right now during the pandemic.She also feels discouraged by neighbours who talk about her behind her back. She hopes to increase revenue so theycan afford to have another child.

Noy enjoys reading fairy tales and singing. She sees her parentsstruggling to work and make ends meet. This inspires her tohelp on the family cassava farm and at home. Despite her driveto help her family, Noy does feel burdened, and this work, alongwith her school work, seeps into early mornings, late evenings,and weekends. She realises the boys around her don’t havethe same responsibilities, and they have more time to play andlearn new things.

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Noy feels ‘strong’ when her parents trust her, and recognise herhelp and support. She is interested in tailoring since she sawwomen in her community running successful tailoring shopsafter having taken a course in the city. She has been speaking toher teacher, who she considers to be her mentor, for advice. Herparents, especially her mother, support her interests, but arestill wary of investing in a course, as funds are low.

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Noy is inspired by women leaders in the community, and shehopes to one day play this role. In the meantime, she wantsto know how to transition from school to making money, andhow to start and run a business. She hopes that she will getthe support she needs from her teacher and tailors in thecommunity.

Vilayvanh enjoys nature and planting in her garden. She works for her familybusiness, making and selling food at a stall right outside their home. She aspires tomove away in search of jobs, but this is difficult as her family expects her to be (andhelp) at home, and they do not trust her to live independently. There are very limitedeconomic opportunities for women in her town — like working in a restaurant, shopor a hotel.

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Working in the family business takes up the full day — from sourcing produce,cooking food, to delivering food — and to her it feels like an extension of houseworkitself. She does understand why it is important, and she is motivated to support herfamily. She believes that mental strength can help fight external barriers.

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She is very aware of differences in gender roles and expectations in her community,and the fact that men (including her male siblings) have less burden and more freetime, which helps them to earn more money. She believes that this is also why shedoes not have many friends. She feels like her opportunities to travel outside townhave not increased as she has grown older.

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Vilayvanh left school after completing Lower Secondary School (Year 3 of highschool). As other people in her community had received degrees and then wereunemployed, her parents felt that higher education was not a good investment.She agrees, and thinks that selling is the only way to have a livelihood in her town.Vilayvanh wishes she had the trust from her family and support to move away insearch of economic opportunities. She also wants low-cost options to develop skillswhich could help her to grow her business.

Dian is at university studying government administration, and she wants to work in a nationalbank like Bank Nasional Indonesia or Bank Rakyat Indonesia. Her father runs a car rentalbusiness but her brother is the one who will take it over

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Dian’s parents encouraged her to go to university to increase her chances of finding a job. Due tolack of information at school she ended up picking the wrong major, as she thought the financeand government administration programmes were the same. She is keen to learn English, butshe doesn’t have the money to take a course so she is watching videos online. She is worriedabout not having enough money to finish university and hopes she will get a governmentscholarship, but she’s not sure she will have the motivation to study hard enough. She wishesthat the information at university was more relevant for preparing for a career.

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She and her brother have similar amounts of homework but as a girl she also has to cook forthe family. She gets bored with chores and waits until night to play on her cell phone, watch TV,and listen to K-Pop. Her parents don’t like it when she hangs out with friends who they thinkare bad mannered. She has a boyfriend but doesn’t want to get married yet. One of her formerclassmates is a young mother and she had to drop out of school.

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She wants to be like the women who work in the city as a Pegawai Negeri Sipil (civil servant) orin multinational companies, who get a salary and wear nice clothes and makeup. She hopes thather boyfriend will allow her to work in the future when they are married. In addition to working,she believes that women need to know how to cook and take care of children. She is worriedabout the COVID-19 situation as she sees lots of people losing their jobs.