PROCESO CONSULTIVO PARA LOS ACUERDOS DE EQUIVALENCIA

A quick overview of the gender disaggregated socio-economic indicators for Nepal shows women lagging behind men in terms of educational qualifications, economic achievements, asset ownership as well as participation in political sphere. In the last few decades, Nepal has been making steady progress in terms of educational achievement of the population as a whole. As illustrated by table 2.1 below, between 1995/96 and 2010/11, there has been an increase in the adult literacy rate as well as the percentage of population attending schools; however, there is a huge gap between the educational achievements of men and women. Gender inequality is even more intense within some social, regional and income groups. For example, in the Terai middle caste group, only 58 percent of 6-10 year girls are at school compared to 94 percent for boys. Also, school enrollment is lower for children from poorer households, where the 36 percent of 6-10 year olds are out of school and two-thirds of these children are girls (Mathema, 2007).

Table 2.1: Education Indicators 1995/96 2003/04 2010/11 Adult literacy rate, both sexes (15 years and above) 35.6 48.0 56.5 Men 53.5 64.5 71.6 Women 19.4 33.8 44.5 School ever attended, both sexes (15 years and above) 33.9 45.8 54.6 Males 50.2 61.2 69.6 Females 19.1 32.6 42.9 (Source: Nepal Living Standard Survey- I, II and III.) Table 2.2: Reasons for Not Attending School

Reason for not attending school Men Women

Did not want to go to school 30.4% 12.7% Parents did not send 14.5% 35.3% Had to help with household work 13.5% 29.6% Too expensive 6.8% 7.5% (Source: NLSS-III.) Table 2.2 above shows the survey responses from NLSS-III on the reasons for which men and women did not attend school. We see that while the most common reason for men to not attend school is not wanting to go to school, for women the most common reason is parents not sending them to school, followed by having to help with household work. These numbers are indicative of the socio-cultural norms where parents are less inclined to send daughters to school.4 When we look at women’s economic participation, we see that most of their work is limited to household work and self-employment in agriculture. Men dominate wage-employment and employment in sectors other than agriculture. Based on the World Bank’s Gender Statistics for 2008, among the employed men, 62.1 percent were in agricultural sector, 15.5 percent in industry and 22.4 percent in services. Among the employed women, these numbers were 84.3 percent, 6.8

4 _{During my fieldwork, some women mentioned that when faced with financial}

constraints, they had to take their daughters out of school so that they could afford to send their sons to school. In many cases, girls were sent to government school (much cheaper, often free) while boys went to more expensive private school.

percent and 9 percent, respectively. Table 2.3 below shows the distribution of the men and women employed across different sectors as well as their mean incomes. We see that most of women’s work is concentrated in the unpaid agricultural sector, and that the mean wages for women is much lower than that of men in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. Table 2.3: Employment Indicators Men (% of employed men) Women (% of employed women) Wage-employed in agriculture 2.7 2.8 Wage-employed in non-agriculture 20.9 5.7 Self-employment in agriculture 53.6 67.7 Self-employed in non-agriculture 17.1 9.0 Extended economy 5.6 14.8 Mean daily wages in agricultural sector (NRs.) 201 147 Mean daily wages in non-agricultural sector (NRs.) 286 189 (Source: NLSS-III) Women in Nepal are behind men in terms of their political participation as well. Though women constitute little more than half the population of the country and they actively participated in political movement of 1951, the mass movement of 1990, and the civil war from 1996 to 2006, they haven’t gotten equal political representation or equal rights (Pradhan, 2005; Pokharel, 2014). When the Maoists won the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008, women gained unprecedented number of seats in the parliament raising hopes for better representation of women’s interests. However, women were marginalized within the parties by being placed in positions with less decision-making authority, and political parties continue to be dominated by elite high caste men (Tamang, 2009). In 2015, women only held only 29.5 percent of the seats in the national parliament and 13.6 percent

of the ministerial level positions.5 _{The new 2015 constitution has provisions for}

substantive gender equality including equal property rights and elimination of violence against women; however, the constitution also contains discriminatory clauses including unequal citizenship rights.6 _{For example, children of a Nepali}

woman married to foreign man can only get citizenship by naturalization (naturalized citizens cannot access higher posts in administration or security), whereas children of Nepali man married to foreign woman gets citizenship by birth. Other variables often used to illustrate the status of women include regional or national trends in age of marriage, women’s ownership of assets, access to credit and prevalence of gender violence. In Nepal, the age of marriage has been rising; the percentage of women married by age 15 declined from 24 percent for those between 45 to 49 years to 5 percent for those between 15 to 19 years. However, the median age of marriage for women aged 25 – 49 is four years lower than that for men (NDHS, 2011). Also, asset ownership is very low for Nepalese women; only 6 percent of the women own a house and about 9 percent own some land alone compared to 23 percent and 25 percent of men owning a house and land alone, respectively (NDHS, 2011). Though women have legal access to banks, their low literacy limits their access to institutional credit (Acharya et al., 2007). Gender violence is also widespread in Nepal; based on a report by Department for International Development (2011), almost 75 percent of women have experienced some form of violence in their lifetimes. 5 _{Source: World Development Indicators database, World Bank.} 6_{Source: Article 11.7, article 18.5 and article 38, Constitution Bill of Nepal 2015.}

Gender discrimination is deeply rooted in the socio-economic and cultural structures of the Nepalese society. As daughters, women are expected to be more obedient, less demanding and satisfied with lower access to resources than her brothers. When faced with resource constraints, a daughter’s education, nutrition and healthcare is often sacrificed to be able to provide better education and healthcare to sons. Upon marriage, a woman is expected to remain subservient to her husband and in-laws. She has to start at the bottom of the household hierarchy and take charge of most of the household and childcare work (Bennett, 1983; Gray, 1990). And, throughout their lives, women’s access to resources is more limited than that of men, they face severe limitations in terms of their freedom and mobility in public spaces and they are underrepresented in almost all public domains from civil service and local governance to politics and entrepreneurship (Mishra, 2014). Though women’s access to education and employment has been increasing in the past couple decades, Nepalese society is still far from reaching the goals of gender inequality.