Widows are always looked upon with suspicion and are considered as ill women in Nepal

-Lily Thapa, Associate Professor, T.U

There are allegations that The Telegraph Weekly prefers to bring into focus only male scholars and prefers not to listen to the expressions of the women folks. These were all valid accusations and hence I accept that we have done injustice and committed Himalayan blunders towards the other gender by remaining inert to their expressions, views, comments and the likes on national or even contemporary international events. Admitting this allegation, we decided to invite a lady for this week in our interview column, Lily Thapa, who is at the moment is serving as an Associate Professor at the Padma Kanya Campus and teaching Sociology.

The list of Lily's engagement in various NGOs and social works is fairly a long one which would not be possible to document here. But yet Lily obtained her Masters degree in Sociology and Anthropology from Tribhuvan University; with social science and community development as major subjects (1989-1990); holds Bachelors degree in Humanities from Padma Kanya Girl's Campus with Psychology as an allied subject (1979-1980); secured her Intermediate qualifications in Humanities from Padma Kanya Campus (1977-1978). Her dissertation  included among others; the status of labours of carpet factory; A socio impact of Mustard farming in Sainbu Village; The Status of Single Women in Nepal and Impacts of Safer Motherhood in Nepal. Apart from teaching job, Lily also keeps herself engaged in some institutions such as

 A Freelance Consultant in Women Development Areas (1996 -till date); Director of private school named Rose Bud English School (1992- till date); Chairperson of an NGO named Women for Human Rights (1994 -till date); Vice-President, Sachetana, an NGO (1999- 2001); and is finally the  President a NGO named , Sachetana (2002- till date). She is also a member of  Member of Tewa, an philanthropic organization (1996 -till date) plus also a member of the South Asian Widows Alliances (SAWA)

Lily Thapa has received training in her allied subjects from Vietnam, Sweden; Dhaka; Thailand and Germany which means that she has extensively traveled abroad.

Lily has several publications to her credit among them include The concept paper of single Women status in Nepal in collaboration of Women & Social Welfare Ministry(1998) and An Understanding on Gender (2002).   

The most unfortunate part is that at the moment her marital status stands as a Widow.

Last week I met this energetic and highly qualified lady at a social gathering and invited her for this column to which she readily agreed. Below the results: Chief editor.

TGQ1: Could you Lily throw some light on the present condition of the Nepali women in general and of the widows in particular in the country? Tell us also  how the Nepali people and the society look at them? Your comments please.

Lily Thapa: The Nepalese society is definitely a male dominated society where men make all the decisions and women are most unfortunately viewed as household workers and child bearers. It is only but natural that in such an atmosphere women are not properly educated nor properly informed of their rights and legal procedures. This takes a worst turn after a Nepalese woman is widowed. The sudden and abrupt loss of marital status divides women as married but widowed. The loss of marital status is surely due to the death of their husbands and later the woman is recognized as a woman only to be pitied. The widowed women is then subjected to bear with the prevailing strict conventional and outmoded social norms and values.

Widows are always looked upon with suspicion and are considered as ill omen. There are superstitions that consider them to be creator of ill fortune. What could be most unfortunate that in the Nepalese society, widows are denied of their rights on their own body such as that, for example, they are not allowed to wear "red and bright" clothes and are not allowed to be present during "auspicious occasions". In some places, widows are not allowed to talk with other men, so they naturally feel inferior and lose their self-confidence.

This should explain perhaps the state of the widows in Nepal.

TGQ2: Tell me Lily! What do you think could be the primary factors for the sheer marginalization of widows as explained by you? Your comments please.

Lily Thapa: I, for one, strongly believe that family plays a vital role in shaping the character of a human being. So if the members of the family are unaware or not informed, this directly affects the children of the household. In the context of Nepal, the lack of awareness and gender inequality in the families forces young girls to get married in an early age without them being independent and at times not even asked. This leads to dependency among the women on their male counterparts and this later makes them to lose self-confidence. Thus a widow is unable to cope with the emerging situations confronting her.

Another major cause of marginalization of widows, I suppose, is the discriminatory laws regarding inheritance, which greatly favors men than women. Thus most of the widows find themselves financially dependants on others, which more often than not forces them to leads a life full of humiliation. This means that the widows are forced to live a life at the mercy of their "in-laws".

Another reason for this is that our patriarchal society identifies women with the identity of their male counterpart. Thus a widow is viewed by this society as one with any identity and support. Thus people are inclined to take advantage of the widows.

I also believe that the women who are the silent witnesses of atrocities practiced on widows are also equally responsible for this present condition.

Have I answered your question?

TGQ3: According to you the problems of the widows are of Himalayan dimension. But yet tell us what initiatives have been already taken or were in the process for the empowerment of the widows in Nepal?

Lily Thapa: Let me put it very straight to you Mr. Upadhyaya! There are no special initiatives taken so far for the benefit of the widows in Nepal. It is very true that government, NGOs and International Community have generally neglected "widowhood" and apparently have taken it as a separate human rights issue rather than fusing it into the domain or ambit of women’s rights. And yet widows are often the poorest, most marginalized and abused sector of the population. Now due to the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, the number of widows is swelling and widows have now become more prone and vulnerable to violence and exploitation of all possible sorts.

However, there is a silver lining. The Women for Human Rights (WHR), an widows women organization established in 1994, provides legal advice, counseling services and also helps widows to be self reliant through skill development training so that they may be employed in small scale industries. But we found out that even though the widows had the required skills, they were not able to market their product efficiently. Thus recently WHR also included "marketing the widows’ products" as one of its strategies for the benefit of the widows. The WHR also runs a small support group for widows since last year in an effort to provide a platform for widows to share their problems and experiences with others like them. Overall, the  WHR works to raise the socio economic status of the Nepalese widows and their families and focuses to mainstream their rights in development.

The WHR hopes that it could time permitting be of some support to this section of the society. 

TGQ4: What I could grasp from your previous expressions that the prevailing traditional and conventional-conservative Nepali society has got to change its attitude towards the widows if they were to improve their living conditions. So what do you think should be the long-term strategies to address their societal problems? Your remarks please.

Lily Thapa: It is true that neither the government nor the non-government sectors have any accurate data on widows and their existing social status in Nepal even though small surveys have been carried out in the past, which have, sorry to say, yielded inaccurate findings. There are no statistics, no systematic surveys, research or analysis of the widows, their profiles, living conditions, basic needs, aspirations, legal/customary rights, nor of their present and potential social and economic contribution to the development of their communities. So first of all, it is necessary to find out the actual status of Nepalese widows through workshops and research and disseminate the findings to all relevant stakeholders.

After that, it is necessary to build a widow network in every district which will help the widows access to information on legal issues, protection, support for children’s’ welfare and education and trauma counseling.

But the most important thing at present is to enhance the capacity of widows for them to be their own agents of change and for them to develop their confidence and self-esteem so that they can assist others and be able to play a vital role in development and peace building in the country.

In my opinion, we need to conduct surveys and find accurate data so that some initiatives could be taken that benefited this section of the society. I think that we can proceed in this direction but then the financial part has been the real problem for us. Let me hope that some kind-hearted donors, national or even international, will come forward.

TGQ5: As I understand, you too are associated with some NGOs. There are allegations that the NGOs were nothing but money-spinners at least in the Nepalese context. Do you agree to this allegation? How would you explain this phenomenon vis-a-vis your own NGOs? Our readers would be interested in the functioning of your own NGOs. Your opinions please

Lily Thapa: It is true that some rotten-eggs in the name of social services swindle money from the donor agencies. However, it would be equally unfair to categorize all of the NGOs to be money-spinners for there are many NGOs, which I know doing fine job and some doing excellent jobs without accepting foreign donations such as, for example, TEWA.

Even before the WHR was established, we were involved in helping the widows and their children just for our own mental satisfaction. But our work was limited and centralized. At that time we had not even thought about the WHR and the credit goes to Rita Thapa, founder of TEWA, who encouraged us all in our work and also arranged financial support from the Global Fund for Women from where we received funds for two years.

Realizing the fact that the financial supports from donor agencies were not and could be not a permanent phenomenon, we at the WHR supported the formation of AADHAR, a sort of cooperative institution that provides the single women with credit and saving program and also loans to begin small scale businesses. However, it is very difficult for the WHR to continue its activities without any financial support from donors be it national or international. But yet we have been trying out best to sustain the activities on our own. This notwithstanding, the road ahead is very difficult indeed and the challenges are really challenging ones.

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