I remember, as a primary level student writing sentences like Nepal is a patriarchal country without understanding the gravity of it. It is fair to say Nepal still is a patriarchal country. However women’s representation post people’s movement of 2062/63 B.S. has improved with the law guaranteeing 33% compulsory women participation. No doubt this was a huge win for women across the country but it came without real struggle. I am not saying that women in society didn’t struggle, they still do; what I am saying is this came without a structured protest, without a political battle from women themselves and at times felt a bit panspermic just like the concept of federalism and secularism in Nepal. Politicians will take pride in the fact that a women president, chief justice, speaker of the house have been there along with 33% representation then in constitution assembly and now representatives council. It would be naïve to think that these statistics is a fair representation of women in our society. As Benjamin Disraeli says there are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The premise is formation of zone sanchalak samiti (a farmer’s executive body that plans and implements programs in the respective command areas cooperating with respective zone implementation unit of PMAMP) in vegetable zone Dhading under Prime Minister Agriculture Modernization Project (PMAMP). All the representatives from listed vegetable cooperatives, farmers groups and private firms had been gathered at Shree Chandrodaya higher secondary school, Bishaltar. The total number of members in that samiti to be formed is 9 and the total wards in the area is 15, so the equation of equal representation from each ward is out of the question. There already is disagreement regarding which wards to forsake its own representative and get combined with another ward. The disagreement got really heated when 3 out of those 9 had to be filled compulsory by female and one of the female had to have one of the three vital posts of the committee.
No one wanted to send a female representative from their ward. There were calls that the wards nearer to the office of zone implementation unit should give female leaders as they are nearby and females from nearby would attend the meetings easily after finishing their household chores. With some discord two nearby wards complied and now to the relief of male representatives and farmer leaders only one female had to be chosen. Then the call began and each ward was asked one by one if they could send a female representative to the committee and each one of them declined. It was supposedly a loss if they couldn’t get a male to represent their wards.
In this meeting there already was a compulsion set by zone implementation unit to the cooperatives that one out of the three representatives to attend this committee formation meeting had to be female. So, there were fair number of female present in this meeting but no more than what was compulsory prescribed by the zone implementation unit. One could easily see that only four female representatives were sitting on the front row and rests of them were languishing at the end of the hall. There were clearly segments of male and female which formed in itself like magic. An alien observing this meeting would have probably guessed this segregated seating of male and female as a human decorum.
Hours were spent negotiating this very point and a couple of women burst their anger with disgust towards the proceedings and the manner in which female participation was being discussed not by some autocrats of bygone era but by their brothers, fathers and neighbors. One woman from the back stood up and asked why just three and why not all nine positions be held by women if they are capable. She pointed out to the fact that large numbers of males from community had migrated abroad for jobs and females were already lifting the bulk share of work in the field and made a case that the same be held true at this proposed samiti. No one disagreed with her, no one replied to her claim, everyone was silenced and the discussion moved on. It was not hard to see that no one entertained her statement as a realistic solution. This meeting could not reach to a conclusion and couldn’t set the template for committee formation and a deadline of a week was set for negotiation and committee formation.
I was there to learn how farmers discuss, work and solve their issues. I observed that, learned a thing or two. I left the hall with this thought- can woman in Nepal fight beyond their allocated 33% and earn their place at the table or will submit to their male counterparts and relish in their 33%?
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