Marriage, mobility and jobs: The quiet exit of Kashmiri women

Srinagar: A month after her wedding in Srinagar, 28-year-old Nida (name changed) boarded a flight to Mumbai. There was no extended farewell, no formal send-off. Her husband worked in the corporate sector; she had already begun transferring her teaching credentials.

“We discussed moving even before marriage,” she says. “Staying back did not make sense for either of us.”

For Saima, 29, the decision came later. Married to a software engineer posted in Gurugram, she spent nearly three years in Kashmir after her wedding, trying to find work locally. “I kept thinking something would work out,” says Saima, a management postgraduate. “But months passed. I didn’t want to sit at home waiting.”

She eventually moved, taking up a contractual role in an ed-tech firm. “It wasn’t about ambition,” she adds. “It was about dignity.”

Their stories point to a quiet but growing social shift in Kashmir. Increasingly, women are leaving the Valley after marriage, relocating to Indian cities or abroad. This is not migration triggered by conflict or sudden upheaval, but a calculated response to economic constraints and limited professional opportunity at home.

Experts link the trend to a widening gap between education and employment. Official data placed before the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly shows that over 3.6 lakh educated youth are registered as unemployed across the Union Territory, including graduates, postgraduates and professionally qualified candidates, with the Kashmir division accounting for a large share.

Women form a significant proportion of these registrations, even as their labour force participation remains uneven. Economists caution that this reflects only registered unemployment, since enrolment with the employment department is voluntary and many job seekers—especially those preparing independently, seeking private-sector work or looking outside J&K—do not register.

“These numbers are best seen as a baseline,” says Prof Farzana Gulzar, who teaches management at the University of Kashmir. “The actual scale of educated unemployment is likely much higher, and that uncertainty shapes household decisions on marriage and relocation.”

Sociologists say the implications go beyond jobs. Dr Farrukh Faheem, a sociologist at the University of Kashmir’s Institute of Kashmir Studies, argues that marriage itself is being redefined.

“Earlier, marriage marked stability—social, economic and geographic,” he says. “Now it is increasingly a strategy for mobility. Families are recalibrating marriage choices in response to prolonged economic stagnation.”

For generations, marriage in Kashmir was rooted in locality—shared neighbourhoods, extended families and local livelihoods. That logic is now shifting. Families increasingly prefer grooms settled outside Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in Indian metros or abroad, where salaries are regular and career growth appears more assured.

Marriage facilitators say education has become central to matchmaking conversations. “Families whose sons work outside, especially in the corporate sector, now look for girls with professional degrees,” says a Srinagar-based facilitator. “The thinking is simple: if the woman is educated, it’s easier for her to find a job and settle with her husband outside Kashmir.”

Economic realities underpin these choices. Despite rising education levels, Kashmir’s private sector remains limited and fragile. Professional opportunities are scarce, career progression slow, and sustaining dual-income households locally is difficult. For many educated women, marriage into unemployment or prolonged dependence is no longer acceptable.

"Women today are unwilling to step into marriages that translate into economic invisibility,” Prof Gulzar says. “This is not a rejection of tradition. It is a response to structural stagnation.”