India’s female firefighters extinguish gender stereotypes

Married before her eighteenth birthday, Nirma Chaudhary could well have ended up like thousands of other child brides in India’s desert state of Rajasthan – forced to quit school and consigned to a life without opportunities as a wife and mother.

But the village girl’s conviction to study after marriage, support from her family, and a government initiative aimed at empowering women, has transformed her fate from being that of a just another invisible child bride to becoming one of Rajasthan’s first female firefighters