“Tailor’s Daughter Is Nowshehra’s First Female Judge.” 

Her name does not appear anywhere in that headline. Her father’s occupation does.

Ask yourself, would that headline exist if her father were a banker?

The class angle is not entirely out of place. Being a tailor’s daughter in a profession where working-class families are severely under-represented has its own structural challenges. But the headline does not report that. It implies it — using her father’s job title as a trope for a class narrative it never bothers to verify. It invites the reader to fill in the blanks: financial struggle, limited resources, and odds stacked against her. Without checking whether any of that is actually true.

Maybe her family was financially comfortable despite her father being a tailor. Maybe her father ran a successful business. Maybe she had every resource she needed. The headline doesn’t know. It assumes and asks you to assume alongside.

The “Despite” Problem

The Central Board of Secondary Education Class 10 results were announced on April 15th. What followed was a flood: social media and news outlets were overflowing with success stories, topper interviews, and “result reaction” videos. Among these was the story of Zainab Bilal, a student from DPS Srinagar who scored 95 per cent in her board exams. She also happened to be visually impaired and had written the exam independently on a laptop, without a scribe.

That feat is remarkable. 95 per cent is high by any standard, and she achieved it on a laptop, navigating a system that was not devised for her. That is the story. Not because she is visually impaired.

The news got it the other way around.

“Srinagar’s Zainab Bilal scripts an inspiring success story, scoring 95% in the CBSE Class X exams despite visual impairment.”

Let us dissect that headline.

Her disability is clearly the reason this is a news story; thousands of........

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