From Silence to Strength: How Women Like Anita Kamble Are Rewriting the Rules in Rural India
In the arid heart of Maharashtra’s Beed district, where the landscape is harsh and traditions even harsher, a quiet revolution is unfolding — led by a woman who once believed she had no voice.
Here, behind dusty roads and veiled silences, where girls are married off young and widows are expected to disappear into the shadows, Anita Kamble chose to rise — not just for herself, but for hundreds of women whose stories rarely make the news.
Her journey starts at 13 — a child bride, still in Class 7, thrust into adulthood long before she understood what it meant. Tragedy followed swiftly. By 26, she was a widow with two young children, suddenly responsible for navigating a world that had offered her little safety and even less support.
But Anita didn’t break. She built.
“I Did Not Discontinue My Education.”
These six words hold the weight of a thousand silent battles. With grit stitched into every step, Anita worked as a tutor, a daily wage laborer, and even sold clothes door-to-door — every rupee earned a lifeline for her family. But even while carrying the burden of survival, she held fast to a vision that many around her had long abandoned: education.
She earned her master’s in social work. Not for a job. For a purpose.
It was at Yuvagram, a local education center, that Anita discovered something deeper than her own strength — a sense of shared pain and power. Among women like herself — widowed, silenced, yet unyielding — she realized she was never truly alone.
In 2015, that realisation bloomed into Ankur, a grassroots organisation dedicated to supporting widowed and single women — not as victims, but as catalysts for change.
Making a Movement Out of Fistfuls
With no funding and no formal resources, Anita’s work began with the simplest form of donation: a fistful of grains, a single rupee, a neighbour’s kindness. That was her currency of change.
“We didn’t even have enough for a banner,” she recalls. “But I knew expansion was crucial.”
And just when it seemed the weight of the work might outweigh the will, something extraordinary happened.
A New Chapter with Parity Lab
In 2021, Anita joined Parity Lab — a Hyderabad-based non-profit founded by Mathangi Swaminathan, a woman whose own story of trauma, resilience, and global impact would soon intertwine with Anita’s.
Through a year-long, deeply immersive fellowship, Anita gained more than leadership skills. She learned the language of healing, the tools of advocacy, and — for the first time — how to turn her pain into power without being consumed by it.
“They taught me emotional regulation, trauma literacy, and how to hold space for others while protecting my own peace,” Anita shares.
From learning video production to mastering LinkedIn, Parity Lab didn’t just train her — they amplified her.
Today, Anita empowers 300 women across 15 villages in Beed, all while running a digitally active NGO with confidence, creativity, and compassion.
The Story Behind the Story: Mathangi Swaminathan
The roots of Parity Lab trace back to 2017, when Mathangi — then already armed with degrees from ISB and Harvard, and years of global experience — stood in a room of women and shared her own experience of gendered trauma.
To her surprise, one hand after another rose.
“Me too,” they said. Not as a slogan. But as a whisper that turned into a roar — a collective exhale in a world that had taught them to hold their breath.
In the wreckage of the pandemic, as domestic violence rose sharply behind closed doors, Mathangi founded Parity Lab with a radical mission: to heal, to empower, and to help survivors become leaders.
Today, Parity Lab runs multiple fellowships, including the Grameen Jyothi Fellowship for rural women, a Global Fellowship for professionals across sectors, and a soon-to-launch men’s fellowship aimed at nurturing male allies.
From Survival to Leadership
At Parity Lab, women don’t just survive — they transform. In group sessions filled with music, laughter, storytelling, and tears, they unpack years of suppression, build emotional resilience, and slowly reclaim the spaces they were once shut out of.
From boundary-setting workshops to somatic wellness practices, they are learning to stand tall — and then lift others.
Mathangi explains: “Healing is not linear, but it is collective. When one woman stands up, she carries many others with her.”
Stories like Ranjita Pawar, who rose from a nomadic tribe to become a national voice against child marriage, and Pushpa, who now leads a growing team of rural changemakers in Uttar Pradesh, are just two examples of how trauma can be the soil where leadership takes root.
Since its founding, Parity Lab has trained over 100 grassroots leaders and impacted more than 70,000 individuals across India and beyond.
A New Kind of Legacy
What Anita Kamble began in the quiet corners of Beed is no longer a whisper — it’s a movement. And what Mathangi Swaminathan ignited with her truth is now a beacon for survivors everywhere, proving that telling your story isn’t the end — it’s the beginning.
Together, they’re breaking generational cycles of pain and replacing them with purpose.
In their voices, in their hands, in their shared sisterhood — a new India is being built.
One story at a time.