Gender
A Vital Issue

By Dr.Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

THE concept of gender has been theoretically grounded in sexuality and procreation. Today, it is a new paradigm but it is deeply rooted in the feminist movement of 1960’s. Gender specialist, Lorber (1994) argues that gender inequality is located exclusively in the structure of gendered social practices and institutions. Gender refers to the social classification of men and women into "masculine and "feminine". It is man-made concept. In Nepal, men are the heads of households, bread-winners, owners and managers of property, and active in outward activities. Women, on the other hand are expected and trained to bear and look after children, to nurture the sick and old, do all household work, and so on.

Scheme

Psychologists recognise gender as a scheme for the social categorisation of individuals. It is a lens through which thought and behaviour are framed. Gender as a social category is closely associated with other forms of social distinctions. In particular, gender is closely tied to the concept of power and status.

Globally, women hold only 14 per cent senior managerial positions (UNDP Report, 1995). In the context of Nepal, the Ninth Plan (1997-2002) highlights that women are still found suppressed, exploited, neglected and forced to live insecure life because of illiteracy, ill health, poverty, orthodox tradition and discriminatory legal system. Psychologists, Williams and Best (1990) claim that in both modern and traditional societies around the world, from Asia to Europe, people expect men to be, and perceive them as, more dominant and driven than women.

Women in Nepal lag far behind men in social development access to economic resources, and positions of power and the maternal mortality rate is the highest. However, Nepal’s agriculture, particularly in hills, depends largely on women.

UNICEF Nepal found that men are the principal decision-makers on the issues related to child rearing but share few child rearing responsibilities. Gender experts insist that male-ness and female-ness are not biological givens, but rather result of a long historical process.

Consequently; men and women develop a qualitatively different relationship to their own bodies. Under capitalist conditions all women are socially remarked as housewives, and motherhood has become part and parcel of this housewife-syndrome.

Gender specialist stresses that in working class homes in south Asia, girls do not play with pots and pans, they are made to start cleaning real pots and pans, and real homes, looking after real babies while they are still very young; whereas boys are sent to school or made to work outside home. This kind of differential treatment, the interests of girls and boys are channelised differently and they develop different capabilities, attitudes, aspirations, and dreams.

Both men and female children are exposed to traditional masculine feminine activities from their very childhood. Girls are asked to help their mothers with household chores, boys to accompany their fathers outside. In communities where the sexes are segregated, girls and boys live in two distinct spaces and are exposed to very different activities. It is through these processes that children imbibe the meaning of masculine and feminine, and internalises them unknowingly.

Gender researchers urge that very often education itself is patriarchal; it justifies and perpetuates inequalities between women and men. Particularly, such type of differences are observed in almost all academic disciplines and is one of the main battles being fought by the women’s studies practitioners.

In the Nepalese context, families, even mothers, often regard girls as a burden, despite the fact that from a very early age they help with household and agricultural work. Boys are sent to school, but girls are kept at home to tend to the younger children. Family must pay a dowry to the husband’s family at the time of her marriage.

Gender researchers, Acharya, Meena and Lynn, Bennett (1981) studied on the status of women in men. Nepal. They highlighted that who women live in the more orthodox Hindu communities and are largely confined to domestic and subsistence production display a much less significant role in major household economy decision than those in the Tibeto-Burman communities where women participate actively in the market economy. Also gender specialist, Strishakti (1995) observes that men predominantly interact with the outside world, while women’s major sphere of operation is within the households. It is said that Nepali girls and women work more than the boys and men do, spending 25 per cent to 50 per cent more time on household’s tasks, economic and agricultural activities.

Health Sector Support Programme, Reproductive Health Project, Nepalganj, Friday that women work hard in the home and fields from early morning to late at night. In contrast, men have less work. Even when they are pregnant they have to do the same amount of work. Approximately, 80 per cent of pregnant women are found to be iron deficient.

Nepalese sociologists pinpoint that at the community level, males play more significant role than females. Males are considered as the chiefs of the family. If children and women make some mistakes, males should be responsible for their mistakes. Mostly, men carry loan-taking and giving businesses. Similarly, the local shopkeepers do not give goods on credit to the females without consensus of the male partners.

The Ministry of Women, Children and Social welfare was set up in 1995 with the goal of ensuring women’s participation in mainstream development through gender equality and empowerment, so that women have their legitimate place in family, society and the nation at large.

Outstanding

In conclusion, issue of gender is very outstanding subject to every developing country like Nepal. Psychologically, gender difference surfaces in childhood. In reality, adult relationships extend this gender difference. The two sexes are the two sides of a coin. As supporting this doctrine, the government of Nepal approves an affirmative action policy in the context of women’s representation in the civil service, including measures to increase the percentage of women in decision–making positions.

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