Gender Equality and Democracy: The Economic Aspect

Dr. Meena Acharya

The constitution of Nepal guarantees fundamental rights of speech, association and political participation without any discrimination on the basis of sex, ethnicity, religion, etc. Economic rights include right to earn, enjoy, own and transact wealth within the laws. The guiding principles embodied in the Constitution make women's equality a priority issue.

Constitutionally women also enjoy equal rights to employment and equal pay for similar jobs. The Labor Act incorporates provisions of job security, minimum wages, clean and healthy working environment, security, and welfare measures, code of conduct and penalties, consultative and cooperative management and labor courts for dispute settlement. Together with the Labor Regulations (1993) formulated under the Act, they have some provisions especially relevant to women.

* 52 days of paid pregnancy leave up to two pregnancies, replaceable in case of death of either of the previous children.

* Creche facilities equipped with the necessary toys and staffed with trained caretaker for babies and children of the women workers, in cases where the factories employ more than 50 women and necessary breast feeding babies.

* Separate toilet facilities for women and men in factories employing more than 50 women.

* Working hours have been fixed at 48 hours per week or 8 hours per day including half-an-hour lunch break. Only 5 hours of continuous work is allowed.

* Overtime work is allowed only for hour hours per day, which must be paid at 1.5 times the regular rate.

* Women and under age children may not be generally employed outside 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. except in cases of special arrangements between the management and the workers, and in hotel, travel, tourism and related business. In such cases women must be provided with necessary security.

* Individuals may not generally be required to carry loads larger than their own body weight, except in cases of adult male workers carrying pre packaged loads. An allowance load for girls of 16-18 years of age is 20 kg. Boys in the similar age group may carry 25 kg. Adult men and women may carry 55kg and 45 kg respectively.

* Government fixes equal minimum wages for agricultural and other sectors.

Thus, politically all rights have been guaranteed to women. But democracy has a severe problem of inclusion. Many of the groups who are socially backward or economically asset-less are unable to compete for their rights in public arena. In the case of women in Nepal, even legally laws apply to men and women in inheritance and ownership of property. Ownership of assets is one of the most important factors governing the distribution of resources in an economy. Lack of equality in inheritance rights makes women a group disadvantaged in access to all productive assets.

Even legally marriage becomes the overwhelming factor in determining all her life options. This is reinforced by all round social norms and legal structures, every thing else is secondary to marriage. Single women even with many children are not given land in resettlement areas, even if such households may be among the poorest of the poor. They may not claim any tenancy rights. Although many husbands may keep property in the name of wives, such woman may not make any transaction in the property without the consent of her husbands and the sons, etc. This limitation is only partially applied to husbands and the sons. Households get access to community resources such as forests through household heads, which are usually men, women may have the derived user rights as log as her husband does not probability event in an average woman's life, she looses all access to community property as well. Such processes are hard to capture by data, since no data are collected on such aspects.

For the analysis of division of labor within the house hold, access and control over households resources, mobility and male control over her sexuality, communities in Nepal were classified between tow broad groups, Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan by Acharya and Bennett (1991). Classification is stall valid for intra-household analysis as illustrated by the recent ICIMOD publication of eleven case studies from different pats of the region, covering eight countries in the Hindu-Kush-Himalayas. However, when it comes to access and control over the public resources and public decision making processes, women in all communities face various levels of discrimination. Control over property and land is universally patriarchal in Nepal. Moreover because of the gendered nature of the modernization process itself, which is permeated by the capitalist, individualistic western value systems, gendered education system and gendered technology, women in all communities loose out in comparison to men. Such modernization process reinforces the discrimination against women in the gendered societies. In other less gendered societies, the modernization forces introduce gender discrimination by selective intervention in favor of men. How this happens is extensively recorded by now and needs no elaboration here.

On the positive side the modernization process could:

* Free women from the ardor's tasks of collecting fuel and fodder;

* Give a choice in her fertility decisions;

* Lighten her work burden by introduction of technology;

* Increase her mobility due to development of transportation; and

* Open up new opportunities of employment.

On the other hand the elements in the modernization process which reintroduce or reinforce gender bias include:

* Dichotomization of production and reproduction;

* Marketization and globalization of the production process;

* Male oriented technology;

* Gendered education system both in terms of access and the genders value systems;

* Privatization or public resources along the patriarchal lines;

* Gender institutions, both in terms of structures and value systems;

* Replacement of values of sacrifice and collective good by individual greed and consumerism; and

* Increased physical insecurity for women girls on account of commoditification of human body.

Recent economic policy initiatives in Nepal have focussed on commercialization and liberalization of the economy, market friendly deregulation, development of infrastructure to facilitate foreign and local investment, downsizing of the government and privatization. The real sector liberalization has included all sectors, agriculture, forestry, the individual and the financial sectors.

The GDP growth rate accelerated to about 5 % annual on the average until early nineties. The share of agriculture in the GDP is declining perceptibly. Its contribution to GP has come down by more than 10% points between 1980/81 and 1998/1999. The role of manufacturing, trade, restaurants, hotels and constructions increasing proportionately (Economic Review, 1998/1999). The recorded manufacturing output has increased and its institutional structure is estimated to be changing substantially from home and village cottage industry based to factory based. Commercialization of agriculture is felt to be increasing slowly. Vegetable and fruit production, which is primarily for sale, has increased substantially, their production index going from 100 in 1984/85 to 168 in 1998/1999 the index had reached a height of 198.

The proportion of urban population increased by almost 50-percentage point in the eighties, from 6 % in 1981 to 9% in 1991. With the construction of new roads, new townships are growing day by day and the process of urbanization is expected to continue.

There are some distinct indicators of decline of the household economy and increased commercialization in terms of income. The proportion of non-agricultural sector contribution to household income and the proportion of cash in the wag/salary income have increased substantially between 1984/85 and 1995/96. The proportion of non-agricultural enterprise contribution to the household income has almost doubled during the period under review (See Acharya, 2000).

How have these structural changes in the economy impacted on the employment opportunities and workload of the women in Nepal?

Another fundamental problem is non-recognition of women's contributions to GDP economically and consequent devaluation of their social labor.

This article focuses on analysis of these spheres of economic life and how they have effected women.

The employment section analyses some available indicators on current employment work opportunities for women on the basis of MPHBS (NRB, 1998) and NLSS (1995/96) data. The following analysis is carries out by ecological zones and by ethnicity separately, as the sample size inadequate enough for a cross-classification by region and ethnicity.

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