Essay by Nigel Gurung
As the title says, I will be explaining what the biggest challenge women and girls face in my home country – Nepal. The Himalayan country is known for its summits and is also the birthplace of the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha. But behind this façade is an underlying horror of mistreatment of women and girls in Nepal. I will be looking into the biggest challenge Nepali women and girls face from the perspective of gender discrimination, gender-based violence with an example of a deadly custom.
The biggest challenge for women and girls is, if not, inequality. Despite Nepal slowly moving into the modern world, it still is a patriarchal country, and because of this, Nepali women and girls face many obstacles that block them from having the right to do anything.
Gender discrimination is rampant in Nepal. As Nepali children grow up, gender discrimination is mostly done by their parents and family members. While a boy can access any privileges ranging from education and food to freedom to talk and even walking alone, daughters of a family are denied these basic rights. While males are sent to high quality schools where the education isrelatively effective and many more
extracurricular activities are provided, females get sent to public schools where the education is poor, and girls are prohibited from doing certain extracurricular activities. Additionally, most girls are subjected to early marriage, arranged due to serious gender discrimination in the country. This hampers the growth of girls and they eventually become young mothers, and the consequence of becoming a mother at a young age is serious.
Nepali girls are blocked from reaching their goals not only by child marriage but also by a deadly custom called ‘Chhaupadi’. It is a Hindu custom, a form of menstrual taboo where females and girls are prohibited from participating in normal family life during menstruation as menstruation is considered impure or unclean. Mostly practiced in western Nepal, females are banned from certain houses which are placed in makeshift huts known as menstruation huts. While practicing this custom, women
or girls are exposed to health risks, such as hypothermia. Girls are exposed to the elements and extreme temperatures, and they are likely to develop pneumonia or diarrhoea, and they also face attacks from animals. Risks of asphyxiation are high if a woman starts a fire in the hut to keep warm. A study done by Ranabhat et al. about women aged 12-49 in the Bardiya and Kailali provinces of Nepal shows that the practice of Chhaupadi is connected to reproductive health problems, such as dysuria and genital itching.
Even though there is no exact number, many women and girls die from practicing Chhaupadi. For example, an 11-year-old girl died of thirst caused by diarrhoea in January 2010 because she was kept in a menstruation hut. Both her family and neighbours refused to take her to the hospital because they believed that they would become impure should they touch her.
Gender-based violence is extremely unbridled in Nepal. In 2017 alone, 140 women were killed in Nepal because of gender-based violence, and 75 of them lost their lives because of domestic violence. Out of 680 documented cases in 2017, the main perpetrator was a family member or a relative in 163 cases of them. A sad reality of gender-based violence in Nepal is generally unreported due to the stigma attached to this social phenomenon. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in intimate partner violence and other forms of domestic violence, and the risks for other forms of gender-based violence, such as sexual exploitation and abuse, have risen dramatically. There was a 2.7% increase of gender-based violence during the first wave of Covid in 2020. This kind of intolerable violence increases the risk of PTSD, depression, and substance abuse.
Despite the harrowing truth of mistreatment of women and girls in Nepal, there have been efforts by the government to deal with the issue. With help from the World Bank, and Peacebuilding Fund, the Nepali government has set up a helpline and an extensive network of counsellors for victims of gender-based violence. With more efforts being done to protect the rights of women, such as setting up the National Women Commission, a government body which protects and promotes women’s rights and interests, Nepal’s women and girls will no longer face much mistreatment in their lives.