Gender roles and relations in Nepal

As in many other countries, Nepal has a patriarchal family system men have the authority to act as household heads and to hold the main responsibilities for decision-making and public duties (Niraula and Morgan, 1996). “For any work, a woman always has to follow the decision of male, her husband, or son. The father or the head of the family, on behalf of the family takes the economical[sic] activities and main decision”(Poudyal, 2003: 275). There are many practices and beliefs in the Nepali society that indicates a clear difference in the position and opportunities of men and women. “The situation for women is characterized by low levels of access to education, healthcare, and economic social, and political opportunities” (Mahat, 2003: 67). According to Subedi (2010) the reason why priority in educational opportunities is given to sons is because men are seen as protectors and providers of the family, while women are seen as homemakers and helpers.

0,627

0,498 0,485 0,479

0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8

2005 2010 2012 2014

Gender Inequality Index (GII) of Nepal

Figure 2: Literacy rate of women compared to men in Nepal. (Source: Globalis, 2014)

Figure 2 shows the literacy rate of Nepali women aged 15-24 compared to men in the same age group. A value of 1 indicates that the literacy rate of women is the same as men’s, which is the standard they have been compared to. The figure shows data from the years 1991, 2001 and 2011, and gives a clear indication that the inequality in access to education has been decreasing which has had a positive effect on women’s literacy rate. Older women still have high levels of illiteracy compared to men (Subedi, 2010), but if the positive trend illustrated in Figure 2 continues over a longer period of time this gap will continue to decrease and eventually close completely.

The social discrimination against women is tightly connected to legal provisions, which deprive women from getting equal opportunities to men (Mahat, 2003). For many years Nepalese women have not been allowed to inherent property mainly because of the tradition of patrilineality, where property and titles follows a male line of inheritance. The Property Right Law of 2001 stated that sons and daughters had equal rights until marriage, but after marrying, daughters were obliged to return all property to their parents (Poudyal, 2003). This law has been reformed in later years, but unfortunately, changing the law has not changed the practise, and in many cases women are still denied access to property that is rightfully theirs (Subedi, 2010). This in turn makes it difficult for women to get access to credit as formal lending institutions seek tangible collateral for loans (Mahat, 2003). These discriminatory practices are reinforced by women’s confinement to household activities. “While homemaking activities are essential for the survival of the household, they fall outside the

Many Nepali communities perform the tradition of virilocality/patrilocality². “Daughters have to leave their father’s home after the wedding and live the rest of their lives, serving in-laws.

Thus, females are treated as someone else’s property” (Poudyal, 2003: 283). The position of a female household member can be further weakened if she is not “originally” part of the new household, community or caste. Patrilocality has also been highlighted as an explanation for why girls receive less nutrition and health care, and fewer years of education than boys in many developing countries (Kevane and Levine, 2003, Chen et al., 2011). One can imagine that it will affect women’s authority in decision-making processes if she is not living in her natal household. Chen et.al(2011) studied the effects of child-gender on short- and medium term investments in productive inputs in Nepal. They found that the use of agricultural inputs and labour was generally higher in households with sons. “Gender composition inside agricultural households appears to be exerting some influence over household behaviour in the context of use of productive agricultural inputs”(Chen et al., 2011: 567). They relate these findings to the tradition of virilocality. A daughter will most likely move away when she gets married while a son will stay with his family and ensure the social security of his parents as they age. “Investments in male children in the first period ensures that in the second period the son is available to support his elderly parents thereby acting as a substitute for the parents’

social security”(Chen et al., 2011: 562). The relationship between gender composition of households and investments in agricultural inputs has not been further explored in this study, but the existence of such relationships has been highlighted to illustrate its possible influence and encourage others to investigate it further in another study.

Gender is one of the most fundamental aspects of self, and a common way of categorizing people. It is evident that men and women face certain constraints and opportunities based on their gender. In Nepal, men are generally recognized as more appropriate decision-makers than women, hence it can be expected that decisions in households in Melamchi are predominantly made by men. If this is the case, it seems relevant to question why men’s domination in decision-making is accepted by the other household members.

2 Virilocality= the wife moves in with her husband. Patrilocality= the wife moves to live in the house of her husband’s father. In practice this will result in the same arrangement in communities where sons live with their