The 8th March marked International Women's Day (IWD), which was celebrated worldwide and was an opportunity to raise awareness of women's rights and gender equality, an important topic all over the world but significantly so in certain parts of the developing world.
"Women perform 66% of the world's work, but earn only 10% of the world's income, and own only 1% of the world's property." - United Nations Development Programme
At the moment I'm volunteering in Nepal for 3 months on the Raleigh International ICS programme. Living in the third poorest country in Asia, in a country where women are at a far greater disadvantage than we Brits in the UK, it suddenly feels incredibly relevant (if not a physical responsibility) for me to be blogging about gender equality. Here in Nepal the differences between men and women are simply shocking and virtually no women have true independence in the sense that we recognise in the UK. A key focus of our project here in the Makwanpur region with Raleigh International is to work with marginalised groups such as women and I'm pleased to say we organised a full day's programme to celebrate IWD, beginning by joining a 200-person-strong march with a band, placards and banners between the villages of Bhalu Khola and Dhading organised by the local women's co-operative. We also promoted the UN's #PledgeforParity campaign by asking local community members to commit to one of five pledges, and we ran a poetry, short story and artwork exhibition in Dhading School on the theme of women's rights, specifically targeting young people in the valley (both girls and boys), which we also displayed publicly for passers-by to browse.
When thinking about what to write, it's hard to know where to start with the myriad of inequalities that a Nepali girl faces daily. I thought it best to start by jotting down some of my observations from living in the village of Bhalu Khola, from talking with my 27-year-old in-country Team Leader Asha and from interviewing my 23-year-old host sister Sharmila about her life and her hopes for the future.
Division of work between men and women
I asked my mitini about her daily routine here in Bhalu Khola: "I start my day around 5:30am with my personal hygiene, then I get dressed and tidy my room, before cleaning the whole house and our outside space, filling the water and preparing for the day. I then worship the god Krishna in our family shrine and serve tea to all my family, before washing up and going to the fields to pick some vegetables to cook for lunch [lunch is served at 9:30am in rural Nepal], which I cook outside on a fire and serve to my family first before eating myself after them, and then I wash up afterwards. Then in the daytime after I finish my morning household chores I help my parents work in the fields or do some studying, or wash clothes or clean the house a bit more. After 4pm I worship in our shrine again and then I have to prepare tea and snacks for my family, then I wash up and start cooking the dinner and then I wash up after that too, and I go to bed around 9:00pm." When working in the field, the women are supposed to do the back-breaking seed planting work, which isn't considered masculine enough for a man. In addition, most days I see Sharmila's 48-year-old mother walking to and from the fields carrying enormous loads of 40-50kg of grass or potatoes strapped to her back, heavy lifting that is certainly too much for her tiny frame and dangerous to her spine. She's one of the twenty or thirty such women I see daily, but have I ever seen a man carry those loads here? Not yet!
Talking about when her two brothers are around (they currently work as migrant labourers in the UAE) she says "they definitely wouldn't be doing the same household work as me. I have to do every household activity, which the men won't do. From the kitchen to the field there is a big gender difference, even in big cities as well as small villages, men think that household chores are only done by women". For a time Sharmila toyed with the idea of following her brothers' example and moving abroad to Korea to work, but her parents wouldn't let her, although now she's changed her mind and is happy to stay in Nepal.
Love marriages vs. arranged marriages
While so-called "love marriages" are on the rise in Nepal, and Asha's marriage is a good example of a love marriage, the ordinary practice here is still for a girl's parents to find her a husband in her early twenties and "arrange her marriage", including the payment of a dowry to the husband's family (reminiscent of Jane Austen's 18th century Britain). According to my mitini sister Sharmila, if she herself can find a man of equal caste, religion and economic status that her parents approve of, then her family will permit the marriage. If she can't, then her parents will propose a suitable candidate to her and she has the right to one veto, but after that she must accept the second candidate. However if she attempts to marry outside of her Brahmin caste then her parents will forbid it.
On that note, we asked her mother how she'd feel about one of her sons marrying outside of their caste: "disappointed" was the response, but she'd begrudgingly allow it. Sharmila is lukewarm about marriage, saying that "sometimes I feel I don't need to get married and that I want to be independent, but other times I think I do need to marry". One disadvantage she identified is that "after I get married, I think that the freedom I enjoy here in my mother's house will be reduced when I move to my in-laws' house". Joint families of multiple generations under one roof are the norm in Nepal, and after her marriage Sharmila will have to look after her parents-in-law, by cooking and cleaning for them, doing their washing and working in their fields.
Dependency on men
Nepal's marriage practice means that upon a girl's marriage, her father effectively hands over responsibility and decision-making ability for her to her new husband and gives him a dowry in compensation for the burden of looking after his daughter. While no one in my host family defined this as such, I liken this transaction to the ownership of property, and Sharmila described "women as like ornaments or accessories for men". The concept of a man as head of the house is deeply ingrained, with Sharmila's mother pointing out that men handle all the money and are the only ones to work outside of the family's fields in salary-paying jobs. Sharmila even agrees with this point: "Most families have a man at the head of the family and it's good to have one person to be in charge of all financial responsibilities, better than individual decisions". When attending a local meeting of the women's co-operative, Asha and I even witnessed certain women actually argue that girls should have the approval of their father or husband before receiving a micro-credit loan designed to empower their earning potential. It's not just men's attitudes that need to be changed here, it's important to convince the women too.
At our project's initial community meeting with the village, Sharmila's mother was one of only two women to attend along with 40+ men -she's a courageous woman. She commented that the women's intense workload at home and in the fields prevents them from engaging in community meetings or ward citizen forums, meaning their voices are rarely heard. On the topic of leaving the house, Sharmila wishes she had more freedom to leave the house. It's not that she has a strict curfew, it's more that "men don't want their women to leave the house, and so the women always live in fear if they do go out". Fear of what, I asked? "Fear of talking to a stranger or a boy and someone else seeing, misinterpreting the encounter and spreading gossip. If a girl's husband misinterprets these Chinese whispers overheard from other people, then he might kick her out of his house".
Unbelievably, a baby born in Nepal has no automatic right to citizenship. Only the baby's father can pass down citizenship, not the mother alone. If the baby is born to a single mother or unmarried parents, then it legally cannot gain citizenship and will remain stateless for the rest of its life, a status belonging to an estimated 4.3 million Nepalese people today, meaning that a woman depends on her husband to bestow the gift of citizenship to her child.
Hopes for the future
Sharmila herself admits that "women have no freedom in Nepal, they are suppressed", but she is hopeful of change. She wants to be independent and to make her family proud, but she acknowledges the barriers that prevent women from asserting their independence: "some women don't have that much courage to make decisions, but even for those that do, obstacles somehow come into their path and bring them back to the start. Both men and women hold them back". What can we do as a society to break down those barriers as a society, I asked? "We need so many things to break down those barriers! We have to be self-confident, have speaking power to raise our voice, we should be honest so that people will trust us, be respectable and do the things that society thinks are respectable, we should be courageous to speak out, and we need improved social work".
To encourage men in Nepal to treat women as equals rather than as subordinated she says "we need to prove ourselves, prove that we are equal to them and can do the same things that men can do. At the same time, all the family members need to support the girl and help her and allow her to do those things. The whole family must agree". While I'm impressed by her passion for changing the status quo, I'm conscious that Sharmila isn't asking the men to change their habits and attitudes, that instead she's relying on the women themselves to make it happen. Neither is she recognising the opportunity that she could have in local decision-making forums or to petition her government to do more for women's rights. Part of our work here is to raise awareness of the options for in civic participation and to motivate young people to become active citizens who have a say in their own future at a regional and national level.
Sharmila does want to leave the household and farming work behind, and she's studying to hopefully work in an NGO or on a social project. I asked her about the future and to consider how she'd like the world to look for a daughter of her own that she may have in future: "I just wish that my daughter won't have to go through what I've been through, I wish that society will treat sons and daughters equally and I want to see a society that allows my daughter to go out, not like now, where a girl is confined to stay in the house. I hope that my daughter will be able to go out and have as much opportunity as a boy". And if she could be granted one wish for the future? "Right now I need a job!"
To read more about my volunteering work with marginalised women and young people in Nepal, take a look at my blog www.TheWell-TravelledPostcard.com for updates.