Quality of equality for women

Shakti (शक्ति) in Hinduism is the all-powerful feminine goddess without whom the masculine form is just a shadow. The mother goddess is also प्रकृति (nature), signifying the intimate link of all life forms with the female creator being.  

This week, women across Nepal have been celebrating the runup to the nationwide carnival of Tij, and the main day this year falls on 6 September. 

Tij has traditionally been a symbol of entrenched patriarchy in Nepali society and a festival to put women in their place. They are required to fast all day to ensure longevity of their husbands, reinforcing the idea that a woman’s worth is tied to a man. 

Read also: Parodying patriarchy at Tij, Sewa Bhattarai

However, Nepali womanhood has coopted Tij and turned it into a festival of emancipation, independence and even defiance. Leading up to the festival, artists and singers have released music videos on social media platforms with scathing satire, commentary, and protest. Tij has become the stage on which to highlight continued discrimination, abuse, even rapes and murders of women which have gone largely unpunished. 

The way Nepalis celebrate our myriad post-monsoon festivals has changed with increased disposable income, and in the process become more commercialised and consumerist. But just to show who is in charge, the Kathmandu District Administration on Tuesday issued a notice saying any ‘unnecessarily extravagant celebration’ of Tij would result in legal action.Why does Kathmandu’s moral police feel it is necessary to control merry-making on the one day that Nepali women have reclaimed for themselves? Don’t they have bigger fish to fry? Like arresting convicted rapists?  

The 2015 Constitution has ensured better representation of hitherto excluded groups like women across all sectors. In theory.  

Read also: Re-inventing Tij, Mallika Aryal

Read also: Songs of rebellion, Smriti Basnet

Even though the amendment to Nepal’s Civil Service Act has reserved 33% of civil service seats for women, they make up just 7.41% of the total jobs. Women from underserved communities suffer double discrimination. 

Women and minorities in politics tend to be token nominations just to fulfil quota requirements. Women were elected to every local council as either a mayor or deputy mayor in 2017, but electoral alliances between political parties in the 2022 elections at all three levels of government gave politicians loopholes to bypass this requirement.

Indeed, while the number of female mayors and chairpersons rose slightly from 18 in 2017 to 25 in 2022, the number of deputy chiefs in 761 local governments fell steeply from 718 women to 564 at the same time. 

Similarly, the 2015 Constitution mandated that 33% of MPs had to be women. Most female parliamentarians were never given a ticket for direct elections by their parties, they had to get into Parliament via the Proportional Representation (PR) system and are therefore not taken seriously by their male peers. 

The current coalition government of the NC and UML came to power two months ago on the purported agenda of scrapping the PR system with a constitutional amendment, arguing it has brought political instability. 

Forget for a moment that it is serial septuagenarian prime ministers of the three main parties who are more responsible for decades of instability, but women and other excluded communities are in real danger of losing guarantees of political representation. 

The 2021 census shows the female population over the age of 10 who are economically active has increased from 29.2% to 60.4%. Women manage nearly 30% of all small and medium businesses. 

Read also: Nepal’s enterprising women in politics, Samjhana BK

Female land and property ownership has increased since women were guaranteed inheritance rights. But while businesses registered by women are on the rise, this is largely so that male family members can use up subsidies for female-owned enterprises. 

However progressive the laws, that is only the first step. True equality cannot be achieved until women are socio-culturally empowered to make their own decisions: whether or not to get married, when and to whom, to join the workforce after marriage or be a homemaker, have children (and how many) or not have them, get divorced, or remarry. 

Read also: 50 outstanding women of Nepal, Pratibha Tuladhar

There is no right or wrong in all this, it is a woman’s choice. Family, society and community have no right to critique their decision. Patriarchy has contributed to gender inequality, but internalised misogyny lurks deep within society.

This is reflected in how Nepali families (including some matriarchs) continue to treat their daughters-in-law as slaves. Socialisation is so entrenched that in many cases, it is female family members who banish daughters to chhau huts during their periods because of fears of divine retribution.

Recently, it was women who defended a self-proclaimed ‘godwoman’ who sermonised that women must endure abuse and exploitation at the hands of the husband and his family because divorce is “unnatural”.  

Nepali society has a lot to learn and unlearn so that the next generation can finally break free of the shackles of discrimination, exploitation, abuse, and inequality.

Shristi Karki