She struggled and fought to receive education, when women were not allowed to go to school. She studied at home and received a high school diploma through correspondence courses. After matriculation, there was a lot of family resistance to her taking admission in college but her brother, Syed Iftikhar Zaidi, paid for her tuition and helped her continue her formal education. In Pakistan she went on to obtain Bachelor of Arts in 1959 and master's in economics in 1961 from Punjab University, Lahore. Kishwar married her friend and a poet Yousuf Kamran and the couple have two sons. After her husband's death, she worked to raise her children and support the family.