A report (published before the CA’s dissolution) by Inter-Parliamentary Union Women in National Parliaments put Nepal, with 33.2 percent women in National Parliament, in 23rd position, well above many developed countries like the UK, the US, and Australia. While Nepal’s 33 percent quota for women in government services is laudable, it still is not sufficient for grassroots empowerment of women. That is why with under 21 percent female representation in both houses, the US is far ahead of Nepal in terms of women empowerment.
Defining and measuring women’s empowerment is tough, and numbers alone surely don’t suffice. But in an equal society, assessing comparable roles can be a good yardstick to measure equality and empowerment.
PHOTO: CLACKAMAS.US
Political participation, education, entrepreneurship, and bargaining power in the house are among the areas where the participation and authority of women is low in Nepal. There have been increasing efforts to change this status quo around the world. In 2000, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution urging member states to ensure increased women’s representation at all levels of decision-making. UN Women has also been supporting (and working with) the governments of UN member states to set global standards for achieving gender equality. And though this continuous struggle for empowerment and equality isn’t new, history hasn’t always been kind to women. Freed male slaves in the US gained voting rights immediately after the end of their servitude, while women had to wait more than half a century for the same.
However, the scenario is changing, and innovative grassroots women involvement is capturing popular imagination. The focus has rightly shifted to enhancing financial stability, entrepreneurial skills and women’s authority in household matter, as much as in education, when it comes to strengthening women’s position.
Educated and/or enterprising women enjoy more financial stability, greater authority in households, more freedom of movement, more engagement in decision making, and they suffer less gender discrimination. They are the ones who are changing the paradigm of women’s participation in the society. But in Nepal, higher education, entrepreneurship and socio-political enterprises are still by and large a male preserve.
It’s not that we don’t have plans and policies to bring more women into education, industry and politics, but rigid social and religious norms and poverty hinder their progress. Moreover, the policies that don’t focus on building up the expertise and skills of women from grassroots, but rather on direct inclusion, like quota reservations, haven’t had the desired effect. If instead the energy and resources were diverted into enrolling more girls into schools, giving women more security against violence of all kinds, providing them life skills trainings, and in facilitating easy access to finance, the benefits would have been more tangible.
Additionally, the forthcoming policies and programs must be dynamic, multi-faceted and well assimilated into the social norms and values to cut down on hindrances to their effective implementation. For instance: Free secondary education was not enough to retain female students in schools, because families held them back for income generation or household chores. Had the government also launched a parallel program to help the families generate income, it might have resulted in increased female attendance in school.
So when policies are introduced, extra care must be given to address potential socio-economic hindrances. An exemplary program which successfully addressed these overlapping socio-politico-economic issues is that of Community Cooperatives. These cooperatives in essence operate under the concept of “of the people, by the people and for the people” within a community, and hence have been able to ensure more female participation. Also because these programs grow organically, they adapt to the society’s natural ecosystem, which is why there is high female participation in this program.
The concept of Nepal’s Cooperatives is derived from the concept of microfinance, first introduced by Muhammad Yunus and adopted by Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. Grameen Bank is based on the idea that it takes financial stability, entrepreneurship and participatory approach from grassroots up, more than just quota allocation, to empower women. About 97 percent of borrowers with Gameen Bank are women, and even while lending without collaterals or legal bindings, this bank has an almost 97 percent loan recovery rate.
This I believe is partly possible because of the relatively high rate of return from investments made from the borrowed money. Studies have shown that female borrowers widely discuss investment opportunities before jumping into a venture. Many of them invest in social issues like women education and health. These community discussions somehow compensate for their lack of experience in making investment decisions, because they give the participants a platform to discuss their ideas and brood over the possibilities and outcomes of the investment.
Reservations that focus only on inclusion and not on building up skills of women from grassroots haven’t had the desired results.
Such microfinance lending and borrowing practices create a sound foundation to raise women’s status in society. In countries like Bangladesh and Nepal where decision making by women is also considered revolutionary, it isn’t easy to fight the stigma and prejudices which women’s socio-economic empowerment invite. Families aren’t always appreciative of the efforts women make to grow outside of their homes. Further, male dominance in our families not only inhibits balance of power in decision making, decision implementation, and family spending, but also limits women’s freedom of movement and engagement. Such microfinance lending has given women rich experiences in decision making, financial stability, exercise of power, and their movement and engagement beyond the household. In 1996 election, for the first time in Bangladesh’s history, more women voted than men—the credit for which can be given to the opportunities provided by microfinance institutions (by Grameen Bank in particular).
In the face of changing gender roles across the globe, Nepal also needs to make the right effort to ensure that women are no more afraid to take up new roles. They must be competent to pursue their socio-economic and political freedoms, and to engage in issues of their interest. Quoting Jae Galvan Lewis, “You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman”; women empowerment is a movement to create an equal, just and wholesome society, nothing more.
The author is an Economics graduate with an interest in public policy
barshaaa@gmail.com
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