Nepal's constitution does not help secure gender justice

- Prof. Harinder Thapaliya, P.K.Campus, TU

During the past decade, women's movements in South Asia and some of the studies conducted during the UN decade for women have helped to focus unambiguously on the issues of gender and equity. This marks a radical departure from previous feminist concerns with gender conflicts in general and women's rights in particular. This new focus, however, is not only the result of a greater awareness among scholars that issues of gender and equity are closely inter-linked. It has also followed from a better understanding of the social experiments conducted on the ground by activists and action researchers that have enabled poor women to move out of poverty into sustainable development.

A debate on gender issues including women rights is very significant in changing Nepalese society because women comprise a little over half of the total population of the country and all of them suffer from exploitation, domination, discrimination and subordination by their male family members. Nepalese society entertains strong traditional values in favor of males. Consequently, gender disparity is bound to be intrinsically very wide. A recent study on the assessment of the major changes in women's lives in Nepal over the past decade has shown that despite higher attainment of literacy, social mobility and awareness, women still remain confined to their traditionally prescribed and socially acceptable roles, lower status and subordination to men within the patriarchal socio-cultural, economic, political and legal frameworks. Male centered process of socialization make different expectations and preparations for their adulthood. It is no wonder that in global and SAARC regional context inequality has shown its ugly hands in Nepal than anywhere. According to Human Development Report 1997, both Gender Sensitive Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure, GEM, reflects the low status of women in all Human Development Measurements. There is a clear picture of interrelations of social, economic, political and legal gender issues which are closely interlined to reinforce one another. The economic and social issues are closely interrelated. The key issues of lack of access of land for women is related to socially determined inheritance rights and religious ritualized need to give away daughters from one clan to some other clan. Women's access to land and property is derived through the marriage relationship. A married woman has no rights on her ancestral property. This puts a lot of control on women access to productive assets such as land, credit and property. These imbalances have very serious repercussion for women. Women bear the greatest burden of human deprivation of South Asia. While growing up in South Asia is a perpetual struggle, to be a woman in this region is to be a non-person (M. Haq HDR South Asia 1997).

South Asian society is predominantly patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal with the exception of certain ethnic communities of Tibeto-Burman and tribal groups. Three fundamental features characterizing patriarchy are #Patriarchal Inheritance System: #Control over women sexuality and body and #Restriction over women mobility.

Women are accorded a subordinate position at all levels. Therefore patriarchy operationalised through the family system needs to be carefully analyzed, understood and addressed if gender difference in behaviors between men and women is to be clearly perceived.

With the limitations major issues related to women in the economic field include their limited access to productive assets the land and property, credit and modern avenues of knowledge and information, concentration of women in low productivity agriculture and increasing work burden without increase in access to resource, child labor, lack of access to education training and technology, concentration at lower paid and informal jobs poor working conditions, risk to personal security and sexual harassment in the formal sector and limited market access women entrepreneurs face special problems of resource scarcity, low risk taking capacity and marketing access. The recorded economic activity rates under report of women work and contribution to household survival. Accuracy of reporting on labor force participation rates in censuses and the definition of economic activity are some of the major issues which concerns women's rights activist the world over.

In Nepal the problem is complicated further by varying definitions of economic activity rates are estimated to be much more than what is reported in ensues data. Agriculture is becoming progressively feminized. Many women farmers engaged in family farms are still reported as economically not active. Nonetheless, ever according to census figures, the proportion of female labor force in agriculture has increased between 1971-1991.An increasing number of women are entering the work force in the formal manufacturing sector because of economic needs. However, they are mainly concentrated in menial, low skill and low paid jobs. Lack of training, education opportunities and limited mobility due to social responsibilities compels to keep them at lower level of industrial hierarchy.

The low participation of women in Nepalese politics is a result of complex mix of interrelated factors. Grossly inadequate representation of women in the national legislature has relatively affected the enactment of gender sensitive legislation like the women's property rights bill. With regard to women existing constitution contains many negative provisions which do not help to secure gender justice.

Though Nepal is a party to a large number of international legal instruments concerning human rights but the discrimination against women continues at all levels. According to the constitution of Nepal 1990, no child can obtain citizenship of Nepal by virtue of descent of his/her father is an alien. The mother's nationality can not be a valid ground for a child to acquire Nepalese nationality. The provision clearly discriminates against Nepalese women and this is inconsistent with the Convention on the Elimination of All Kinds of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, and international convention on civil and political rights.

At the national level, the government policies have tried to respond to women's problems in various ways. The government had emphasized women's involvement in all programs and projects for meeting their needs in all the sixth, seventh and eighth year plans. All three plans with slight variations in emphasis focussed on small scale income generation, education and training and family planning programs for women. The Eighth plan in particular mentioned about increasing women's presentations at decision making in the government, non-government and semi-government sectors as a monitoring system for recording gender discrimination at work. Major problems now relate to implementation. The experiences dealing with women's issues in the past two decades indicate that exclusive focus on women as an analytical category and efforts to cater to their practical needs for food, shelter, basic education and primary health are not sufficient for building an equal opportunity society for women and men.

Text courtesy: Gender and Democracy in Nepal-a book recently published by the Central department of Home Science, TU, in cooperation with the FES-Chief editor.

Poor must be identified through census if poverty is to be eliminated in Nepal

Prof. Dr. Madan K. Dahal, Tribhuvan University.

Nepalese economy is circumscribed by the low level equilibrium trap primarily attributed to inefficiency and lack of capacity to absorb the external shocks. This is not a new phenomenon. Although there is apprehension that the state of economy is becoming more vulnerable, it has no nexus with the present political crisis because Nepalese economy suffers from serious structural constraints for a long time. The basic challenges to our economy are poverty alleviation and an attainment of high level of economic growth rate. The poor must be identified in totality through the census if poverty is to be eliminated in true sense. The extent of poverty could be reduced by developing human resources through utilizing internal resources particularly to meet the growing demand for middle level manpower in the international labor marker. This will significantly increase the magnitude of remittance instrumental for a high level of GDP. This calls for reordering of priority from subsistence agriculture to remittance economy. The high level of economic growth rate could be attained through maximizing the benefits from the economies of neighborhoods--India and China, regional cooperation and globalization under the doctrine of 'Outward
Oriented Economic Nationalism'. It entails a trade regime with zero tariff for both Nepal and India to start with. Although this may lead to a loss of Rs. 10 billion revenue from customs duties in the beginning, benefits from the free access for Nepalese goods to the vast market of India with zero tariff would yield foreign exchanges ten times higher the expected revenue.

Therefore, there is need for reviewing the existing trade and transit treaty with India that comprise a negative list. The present customs duties regime is also the source of smuggling, corruption and a bone of contention between India and Nepal. There is also need to conduct survey of the wealth of the nation to examine the economic potential of bio-diversity. Nepal must claim its patent rights over various species grown in Nepal such as herbal plants and water resources to be mobilized as per the theory of economic development.

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