Women’s are Difficult Circumstance – Cultural Dimension and Gender Insecurity Presenting: Bandita Thapa General Secretary Women Foundation Nepal “Possibilities of Working Together”

Objectives: Women have a vital role to play in the century: they embody the power to influence, to decide, to lead and to be a change but In Nepal Gender – based violence is, not surprisingly, widespread in Nepal. Because male dominance and female subservience are at the root of against women. women’s has been circulated different boundaries through social, cultural and traditional ways. They don’t have control on resource. They are in vulnerable situation always they have fear from their husbands, families, societies and even being women. Methods: In the rural areas through focus group discussion and individual it was interviewed with some relevance questionnaire. They expressed what they are facing in their daily life and how the society perceives them.

Results: 85% women are house wife and they have to be victim in any way on daily life. Ninety – five percent of the women and girls surveyed reported that they had personally experienced violence, 77% of them from their own family members. Nearly 58% reported that such violence was a daily occurrence. (UNFPA Nepal 2006 ) Violence was reported across all ethnic, caste and income groups. In rural areas those women who are depended in agriculture but they don’t have control in market of financial assets. They are discriminated through various categories like class, caste, financial standard and gender is the single word of unequal treatment. We have found Gender Violence throughout a woman’s life in various ways: prenatal sex selection, battering during pregnancy, emotional and physical abuse, differential access to food and medical care.

Conclusion: Women’s having violence both reflects and reinforces inequities between men and women and compromises the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims. It encompasses a wide range of human rights violations, including sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, trafficking of women and girls and several harmful traditional practices. Anyone of these abuses can leave deep psychological scars, damage the health of women and girls in general, including their health and in some instances result in death. They can’t lobby on themselves so being victim of social practice and cultural barrier.

Take a moment, and a picture our mother daughter, or According to statistic, one of them will be a victim of being women. As shocking as the statistic may seem, discrimination against the mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters of humanity – women and girls – truly affects each of us. The fact is that difficulties against women and girls results from conscious human decisions. While it is as epidemic, it does not have readily visible or diagnosable symptoms neither does the epidemic result from one malicious germ or virus. Rather, it is the product of human choices over time – choices that have resulted in a world where women and girls of every age, race, class, culture and religion are at risk of difficulties.

The problem of difficulties against women is one that has hunted the world of ages, but even now, the complexity and daunting nature of the issue has prevented most people from being as informed on the topic as they could be. After all the first step towards solving a problem is understanding the issue and all of its facts. The purpose of this background,then,is to provide a glimpse into this very near world of discriminated that is perpetrated against women every second, with the hope that greater understanding will engage of us in conversation and actions such atrocities that will eliminate such atrocities and enable all humanity to realize the goal of full equality between the sexes.

Women’s are difficult circumstances: How and Why it’s traditionally shaped within a cultural and social matrix? Cultural:  Gender – specific socialization  Cultural definitions of appropriate sex roles  Belief in the inherent superiority of males  Values that give men proprietary rights over women and girls  Notion of the family as the private sphere and under male control  Customs of marriage (bride price/dowry)

Economic  Women and girl’s economic dependence on men  Limited access to cash and credit  Discriminatory laws regarding inheritance, property rights, use of communal lands, and maintenance after divorce or widowhood  Limited access to employment in formal and informal sectors  Limited access to education and training for women.

Legal  Lesser legal status of women either by written law and/or by practice  Laws regarding divorce, child custody, maintenance and inheritance  Legal definitions of rape and domestic abuse  Low levels of legal literacy among women and girls  Insensitive treatment of women by police and judges.

Political Under – representation of women in power, politics, the media and in the legal and medical professions Domestic violence not taken seriously Notions of family being private and beyond control of the state Risk of women challenge to status quo/religious laws Limited organization of women as a political force Limited participation of women is organized political system

Gender Insecurity Studies of very young girls and women show only that, although boys may have a lower tolerance for frustration, and a tendency towards rough – and – tumble play, these tendencies are dwarfed by the importance of male socialization and peer pressure into gender roles. The prevalence of domestic violence in a given society, therefore, is the result of tacit acceptance by the society. The way men view themselves as men, and the way they view women, will determine whether they use violence or coercion against women.

Gender insecurity both reflects and reinforces inequities between men and women and compromises the health, dignity and autonomy of it’s victim hums. It encompasses a wide range of human rights visions, including, sexual violence, sexual assault and harassment, trafficking of women and girls and several harmful traditional practices. Anyone of these abuses can leave deep psychological scars, damage the health of women and girls in general, including their reproductive and sexual health, and in some instances, result in death.

Type of discrimination/violence Phase Prenatal sex selection, battering during pregnancy coerced pregnancy Female infanticide, emotional & physical abuse differential access to food & medical care Genital cutting: incest & sexual abuse differential access to food medical care, education, child prostitution Prenatal Infancy Childhood Gender insecurity- throughout a woman’s life

Adolescence Reproductive Old age Dating and courtship violence, economically coerced sex, sexual abuse in workplace sexual harassment, forced prostitution Abuse of women by intimate partners, marital rape, dowry abuse & murders partner homicide, psychological & sexual abuse in the workplace & harassment abuse of women with disabilities Abuse of widows, elder abuse

Some Evidence of Discrimination A daughter is denied equal inheritance rights Discrimination on intestate property and in the line of succession Women to attain 35 years of age and 15 years of marriage to receive share in the husband’s property Discriminatory property right of a widow Divorce woman without property rights

Thank you! Namaste