NATIONAL 9 (Spotlight Weelky)]

Gender Gap

A parliamentary panel's approval of the 11th amendment to the Civil Code, establishing women's rights to property, has brought the contentious issue back to the center of public discussions

By AKSHAY SHARMA

With the Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives having approved the 11th amendment to the Civil Code, establishing women's right to property before marriage, the controversial subject has again been brought to the forefront of national discussions.

The government took an about-turn from an earlier draft that would have allowed women to retain their share of parental property after marriage. The opposition CPN-UML, accusing the ruling Nepali Congress of adopting double standards, threatened to step up protests in parliament and outside until the government ensured that women are allowed to keep their share of parental property even after marriage.

Women : Against discrimination

"Our lawmakers do not know what they have passed and what its likely outcome would be, because they are themselves bewildered," said an analyst on condition of anonymity. "Neither the scribes contracted by the ruling party nor anyone else has gauged what these drastic reforms actually mean. None of the lawyers sympathetic to the ruling party have weighed whether this is the way to properly reform the situation."

Other observers agree. "Without rudimentary knowledge of what the decision entailed, supporters had the bill passed. They resorted to the pressures of last-minute debate, decisions and compromises. As the government has finally reached a decision to pass this bill under Article 16 of the constitution, nobody has bothered to ensure the people's right to be informed is upheld," said another analyst closely following the debate.

Efforts to limit the rights under any guise inevitably draw accusations of discrimination. "The epochs that have regarded women as the 'other' are those who refuse most harshly to integrate her to the society by the right of being human," wrote Simone de Beauvoir in her seminal 1949 book "The Second Sex". "Today she can become an other who is also an equal only in losing her mystical aura. These anti-feminists have always played upon this equivocation."

Critics of the bill are steadfast in their belief that it ignores the realities of Nepalese society. "The current bill passed in parliament is going to legalize the dowry system," argues an analyst. "The government has reached a half-way compromise to equalize what they give to sons and the daughters as long as she is a member of the family. The moment she changes families, the money will follow her," he adds.

Another analyst told SPOTLIGHT that the communists' stand stemmed from their ideology. "The communists in parliament opposed the bill and the parental model of the family as something to reckon with. After seven years of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, women had no valid right to property. Perhaps the communist leaders of the country were subconsciously showing the same outlook toward the institution of marriage and family. They were contradicting other members of parliament in their approach to subvert the institutions of the family and the marital status," he added.

"Maybe the moderate democratic party in parliament has saved the institution of the family from being subverted. But the present scenario may have its negative impacts on the system as a whole, bringing back scourges like the dowry system," added another expert. "Legally property is not allowed to change hands this way, but women activist will emerge. The scenario would be something like this: my son will marry for dowry. The relatives will scream for dowry."

"For six years, a writ filed at the Supreme Court has triggered confusion and controversy," argues a legal expert. "That means the traditional family will be destroyed in Nepal. It gave an idea but it can't be said that the laws did not discriminate men from women but the government has bent down under the populist pressure in its current decision," he said.

But is it enough to change laws, institutions, customs, public opinion and the whole social context, for men and women to be truly equal? De Beauvoir wrote in her book: "We must not believe, certainly, that a change in woman's economic conditions is enough to transform her, thought this factor has been and remains the basic factor in her evolution; but until it has brought about moral, social, cultural, and other consequences that it promises and requires, the new woman cannot appear.

Bitter and divisive as the current debate has become in the midst of political grandstanding, all sides are claiming to advance the larger interest of Nepalese society and women ó an objective the country has long hoped to achieve without being able to find a way.