Through employing ethnographic data collected with female teachers from rural and low‐income communities in Pakistan, this paper examines how parhi likhi (educated) women's access to valuable opportunities in public domains is contingent upon them becoming subject to new regulations, especially regarding their sexuality. This gendered process of regulated empowerment challenges the discourse of women's education as universally empowering and highlights the complex and multidimensional impact of education in different sociocultural contexts.