Role and Status of Women in Nepalese Society

THE ROLE AND STATUS OF WOMEN IN NEPALESE SOCIETY

Submitted to:
Dr. Ek Raj Ojha
Kathmandu College of Management

Submitted by:
Pragya Uprety
Rabi Rayamajhi
Manish Agrawal
BBA Third Semester

December 5, 2005

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“The role and status of women in Nepalese society “ is a group report presented for the partial fulfillment of the course of economic development. This report contains facts and figures that provide insight on the condition of majority of women in Nepal in the past as well as in the present. Moreover, it also highlights and emphasizes their role and importance in the context of economic development of the nation.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all who have directly and indirectly co-operated with us in the preparation of this report. Specially, we would like to thank our college, Kathmandu College of Management (KCM) and Dr. Ek Raj Ojha , our course instructor for providing us with this opportunity. Lastly, we’d like thank Mr. Sujan karki for providing us with some of the references that proved to be of immense use while preparing this report.

Sincerely,

Pragya Uprety
Rabi Rayamajhi
Manish Agrawal and
Anurag Joshi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………2

II. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..5 A. The Urgency………………………………………………………………..6 B. Key facts……………………………………………………………………8

III. STATUS OF WOMEN IN NEPALESE SOCIETY……………………………….9 A. Population ………………………………………………………………...9 B. Access To Economic Resources…………………………………………..10 C. Access To Knowledge…………………………………………………….11 D. Employment……………………………………………………………….12 E. Health ……………………………………………………………………..14 F. Autonomy………………………………………………………………….16 G. Trafficking…………………………………………………………………16 H. Political Participation……………………………………………………....17

IV. ROLE OF WOMEN IN NEPALESE SOCIETY………………………………….17 A. Health And Education……………………………………………………...18 B. Agriculture…………………………………………………………………18 C. Crop Production…………………………………………………………….18 D. Forestry……………………………………………………………………..19 E. Livestock……………………………………………………………………19 F. Environment………………………………………………………………...19 G. Rural Production……………………………………………………………20 H. Food Security………………………………………………………………..20 I. Tourism……………………………………………………………………...20 J. Limitation to the role of women…………………..………………………...21

V. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………..22

VI. REFRENCES………………………………………………………………………...23

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLE 1. Percentage Distribution of Total Population and Sex Ratio in Different Ecological Regions of Nepal……………………………………………..9
TABLE 2: Borrowings from Formal & Informal Sources………………………....10
TABLE 3: Literacy Rates in Rural and Urban Areas by Sex ……………………..11 (1981–1997)
TABLE 4: Economic Participation Rates by Sex…………………………………12
TABLE 5: Percentage Distribution of the Employed Population (Aged 10+ years) by Major Occupational Groups, Nepal 1991……………………….12.
TABLE 6: Employment Status of Economically Active Population ……………..13 by Sex 1991
TABLE 7: Women in Tourism and Related Industries (1988)……………………13
TABLE 8: Female Wage Rates as Proportion of Male Wage ……………………14 Rates
TABLE 9: Selected Development Indicators 1991…………………………………15
TABLE 10: Maternal Mortality Rate/1000 live births……………………………….15
TABLE 11: Sex Differentials in Children’s Nutritional Status……………………..15
TABLE 12: Wives’ Perceptions Towards Gender Roles and Duties………………16

( INTRODUCTION

Since the early days of the Industrial Revolution women in Europe and North America have made considerable progress towards equality with men. It must be remembered, of course, that the relatively liberated and affluent women of Europe and North America are only a small minority of women in the world today. Women in many non-Western countries and especially in the so-called Third World generally live in a state of subjection and misery. Most of their energy is consumed by a hard and unrelenting struggle for sheer survival. More than a billion women (i.e., the majority of the world's female population) live in poor, rural areas. Most of them are illiterate, malnourished, exhausted, or even ill, and are forced to work long hours for little reward. Naturally, men share many of these hardships, but women still bear the greatest burden. In nearly all "underdeveloped" countries boys are favored over girls from the moment of birth, since parents consider sons as a guarantee for their economic security in old age. Girls, on the other hand, marry into some other family. Thus, even under conditions of abject poverty, boys are better fed, clothed, and educated than girls. In emergencies and in case of natural disasters also, female needs take second place. Furthermore, in many poor countries women have few rights and are early given away in marriage with hardly a voice in the matter.

Nepal is an only Hindu nation in the world, where we can find unique tradition of tolerance and harmony among the followers of different religion. But Nepal is also among the developing countries, where the state of women is not satisfactory. Nepal is still caught in a vicious circle imposed by the patriarchcal society. Male dominated family system provides little scope for the female to assert their identity. In virtually every aspect of life, women were generally subordinate to men. They are marginalized from economic and social opportunities due to illiteracy, poverty and conservative social taboos. Many customs, rituals and practices propagate violence against Nepalese women such as deuki; jhuma; kumari; child marriage, polygamy, unmatched marriage (marriage between partners with a very large age difference), and polygamy. There are countless others. But it is the violence that has forced women and children in particular to pay a terrible price. The Forceful recruitment of young women in the Maoist force is another serious issue in Nepal. Many young women have been displaced from their homes and forced to stay away because of this threat to them in their villages. Killing of male members of the family by both parties (the Maoist and the police) is another way Nepalese women are being victimized. Nepal's situation is both urgent and complex. For true peace in Nepal, security is essential. Only with security will we win the restoration of women's rights, peace and democracy. Democracy was restored in Nepal in 1990, but all the political parties have since violated the constitution. Even now, we have not yet been able to develop a democratic culture in Nepal. . It is sad to know that Nepalese women's hopes for democracy turned to a mirage, as they did not sense any difference even after democratic changes. The government and other political parties have failed to maintain law and order or to eliminate poverty and backwardness by those who are in power.

THE URGENCY

A. Women must be in the decision-making bodies in large numbers to improve the overall status of women in our society. The Nepali constitution which is prejudiced against women has to be reformed if one wants to see an improvement in the status of women. There is a need for mass counseling among the affected lot backed with legal counseling. Nepalese women should be nominated to village councils, municipalities, district councils, district development committees, sub-committees of local government, and a mandatory provision for inclusion of women to various committees

B. Nepalese women should be involved in all peace processes Because displaced women are the real problem in Nepal. If Nepalese women are to play an equal part in security and maintaining peace, they must be empowered politically and economically. In the last general elections held on May 1999, out of 2238 candidates for 205 seats only 135 were women and as many as 113 constituencies did not have any women candidate at all. As a result, the elections to the local bodies held on 1997 and 1998, returned more than 40,000 women representatives. It constitutes almost 20% of all the elected office bearers. They must be empowered at all levels of decision- making, both at the pre-conflict stage as well as at the point of peacekeeping, peace-building, reconciliation and reconstruction.

C. Nepalese women's organization should mobilize and build capacity of women and civil society at large to contribute peace Because for women interested in reconciliation, the challenge is to develop an integrated gender approach. Women's organizations should support democratic pluralistic society and peaceful political transition. A member of women's organization can help bring about drastic and conceptual changes. There is an overriding agreement that the lack of sustainable political, economic and social development with no real changes in the lives of the women, children, poor and vulnerable has been the most significant contributing factor to the conflict situation in Nepal. While Nepalese women's organizations can play key roles in information gathering, peace building, and can help the government city to move from simply responding to crises to preventing their occurrence.

However, things are changing slowly but steadily. Women in development have been accepted since the sixth plan as a national policy. After the restoration of multi party system in 1990 policy makers are giving due importance to uplift the status of women. A separate ministry, to look after the welfare of the women, has been established. The question of women empowerment has been brought into the limelight.

The main focus of the ninth plan is on integrating woman into the development mainstream through
• gender equality and women's empowerment
• increasing women's participation in every sector
• giving a concrete shape to gender concept in the process of formulation, implementation and evaluation of sect oral policies and programs
• accelerating the process of multi-faceted development of women's empowerment by uplifting their social, economic, political and legal status
• protecting and promoting the rights and interests of women
• gradually eliminating violence, exploitation, injustice and atrocities being committed against women.

Since 1991, hundreds of local NGO's have been established in Nepal. Nepalese women's organizations could play a key role in information gathering and peace building, and they could help government and civil society to move from simply responding to crises to preventing their occurrence.

In a pluralist society such as Nepal, ensuring equal representation and participation of all communities and guaranteeing the rights of women and of minorities are among the most important tests of a democracy. The lack of women in politics has a profound impact on the style and content of policies, which can lead to situations of conflict. Policies and programmes need to be sensitive to the quality of life and security of women within the camps or areas where displaced persons are concentrated. The Nepalese women want the war and the inequality to come to an end and their urgent essential problems to be addressed immediately.

KEY FACTS

Some key facts about women in Nepal are :

( Nepal has a total population of 18.5 million and among it 50.1% are female and 49.9% are male (CBS 1995). More than 90% of the population lives in rural areas

( In Nepal, the literacy rate for the population of 10 years and above is 39.6% However; the literacy rate for women is 25.0%. This is less than half the rate for men (54.5%)

( Based on 2003 National Women's Commission's report, Women account for around 33%of the Maoist militia in some districts, while the figure is as high as 50 percent in the "highly mobilized Maoist districts". The report says that 50% are at cadre's lower level, 30% are soldiers and 10%memebers of central committee.

( Women are not so much involved in decision making bodies. In last general
Election held on May 1999, out of 2238 candidates for 205 seats only 135 were women and as many as 113 constituencies did not have any women candidate at all.

( 90.5% of women are engaged in agriculture as against 74.9% of men and in rural setting women have extensive work loads with dual responsibility for farm and household production.

( There is a lower economic participation by women
(40.4%) as compared to men (59.6%) (CBS, 1996). Personal
/ Community service and commerce are the third largest sector of the lower participation rate among women than men relatively

( The urban manufacturing sectors employs higher proportion of women (10.6%) as compared to men (8.7%), thus a large proportion of women work in garment, matches, pharmaceutical, cigarette and food processing industries.

( The National Planning Commission estimates that 49% of the populations are living in absolute poverty (EIU 1997). And, women are more vulnerable than men. They have a share of only 33% of total income earned in the country (UNDP 1997).

( Women contribute considerably to household income through farm and non-farm activities

( In Nepal, there are currently more than 118 legal provisions that directly discriminate Nepalese women, strictly limiting their rights. Although the Nepalese constitution strongly advocates gender equality in principle, Nepalese women have not yet experienced that sense of equality. They are still treated as a second-class citizens and the ongoing conflict between the government and the Maoist militia has only served to aggravate the situation.

( STATUS OF WOMEN IN NEPALESE SOCIETY

Status in simple terms is a socially defined position given to a group or the members of the group by others. Status of women according to the United Nations has been defined in the context of four broad aspects
1. Access to knowledge (education)
2. Access to economic resources
3. Access to political power and
4. Autonomy in the process of decision making

Moreover, we can define the status of women in many other categories including

1. Population
2. Health
3. Employment – labor force, self-employment and informal sector, agriculture, tourism
4. Trafficking
5. Politics

The status of Nepali women under these broad categories can be summarized in the following points

POPULATION

Nepal has a population of about 24 million in which the rural population accounts for 90.8% and the urban 9.2%. 42.4% of the population are under 15 years of age. The population growth rate is 2.08% and population density is 125.6 persons per sq km. Women constitute 50.1% of the total population (CBS, 1995). About 13.2% of the households are female-headed. The total fertility rate is estimated at 5.1% (ESCAP, 1995).

The sex ratio in Nepal is 99.5, indicating an excess of women over men. Men outnumber women in urban areas, while the reverse is true in the rural areas. This is largely due to a bias in employment and education that favor men, resulting in large male out-migration from rural to urban areas.
TABLE 1. Percentage Distribution of Total Population and Sex Ratio in Different Ecological Regions of Nepal
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Source: Population Monograph of Nepal, Central Bureau of Statistics, 1995, p. 29.

ACCESS TO ECONOMICS RESOURCES

( ACCESS TO RESOURCES
Women’s access to land and property is derived through her marriage relationship. A married woman has no right in her parental property. She gets an equal share in the husband’s property together with her son, if she remains faithful to him and his family. This is server’s limitation on women’s access to all productive assets.
Marriage becomes the overwhelming factor determining all her life options. This reinforced by all round social norms and legal structures, every thing else is secondary to marriage. Single women, even with many children are not given land in resettlement areas, even if such households may be among the poorest of the poor. Although many husbands may keep property in the name of wives, such women many not make any transaction in the property without the consent of her husband and sons, etc. This limitation is not applied to husbands and the sons. Households get access to community resources such as forests through household heads who are usually men. Women may have the derived user rights as long as her husband does not abandon her. When a husband brings another wife and leaves her, which is constantly recurring even in the Nepalese society, she looses all access to community property as well. Two major indicators of such inequality are access to credit and increasing involvement of women in commercial sex work for survival.

( ACCESS TO CREDIT
It has been discussed widely that women’s access to credit is limited because both formal and informal credit institutions are geared to funding property owners. All formal credit institutions seek tangible collateral from loan and women are effectively sidelined from institutional credit since women have little access to the inherited property. The village moneylenders are also interested more in earning high interest or acquiring the debtor’s property rather than financing people in need.

TABLE 2: Borrowings from Formal & Informal Sources
|Source of Credit |All Households |Male |Female |
|Institutional |29.7 |30.4 |15.4 |
|Agricultural Development Bank |15.9 |16.4 |4.9 |
|Commercial Bank |11.6 |11.9 |7.4 |
|Others |2.1 |2.1 |2.1 |
|Non-Institutional |70.3 |69.9 |84.6 |
|Friends & Relatives |24.5 |24.2 |30.5 |
|Moneylenders |28.4 |27.9 |38.9 |
|Landlords |0.9 |0.9 |1.0 |
|Merchants Traders/Others |16.5 |16.6 |14.2 |
|Total |100.0 |100.0 |100.0 |

Source: IIDS, 1992.
Women’s access to institutional credit is further restricted by their confinement to household activities and lower level of awareness and educational attainment. It is one of the major stumbling blocks for women entrepreneurs in all sectors including agriculture.
ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE (EDUCATION)

The total literacy rate in the rural areas in 1991 was 36.8 per cent compared to 66.9 per cent in the urban areas. In the rural areas, 51.9 per cent of males and 22.0 per cent of females were literate in 1991. In urban areas, 78 per cent of the males and 54.8 per cent of the females were literate. There is evidently a wide disparity in the literacy rates in the rural and urban areas and in between males and females as well...
The lower literacy rates among females are a result of a variety of historical, economic and social reasons. Social prejudices against female education, restrictions on mobility, low social status granted to the females, the system of early marriage and low participation of females in formal sector too result in lower literacy for females. School enrollment at the primary level among girls is lower than among boys. Although the literacy rate of men and women is increasing, the gender gap is also increasing. The gender gap in 1991 was more in the rural areas (29.9) than in the urban areas (23.2).
TABLE 3: Literacy Rates in Rural and Urban Areas by Sex (1981–1997)
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Source: CBS Population Monograph of Nepal 1991

EMPLOYMENT
In Nepal, a large part of women’s work is not considered as economic activity. As a result, in the 1991 census only 45.2 per cent of women as compared to 68.2 per cent of men are classified as economically active
TABLE 4: Economic Participation Rates by Sex
[pic]
Source: CBS Population Monograph 1995.
Among the economically active women, occupational structure reveals that 81 per cent of the population was employed in the agricultural sector in 1991. While the per cent working in agriculture is greater (92.7 per cent) for females than males (80.2 per cent), the per cent working in service, production and sales is higher for males than females.

TABLE 5: Percentage Distribution of the Employed Population (Aged 10+ years) by Major Occupational Groups, Nepal 1991
[pic]
Source: CBS Population Monograph of Nepal 1995, p. 211
Similarly, statistics show that in case of Nepalese women about 75% are self-employed while only 0.6% are employers.

TABLE 6: Employment Status of Economically Active Population by Sex 1991
[pic]
Source: Population Census, 1991, CBS.

In Nepal, women are believed to be engaged in large numbers in tourism (hotels, airlines and travel agencies) and other tourist related services such as restaurants, carpets and handicrafts manufacturing after agriculture, commerce manufacturing and personal and community services.
But very little information is available on women in tourist sector (hotels, airline travel and trekking agencies) per se. Nepal Rastra Bank study of the tourist sector (completed in January-May, 1988 and published in 1989) showed that 20.6 percent of the employees in tourist and related industries were women. Carpet had 66.4 percent of these female employees. Distribution of female employees as per the level of jobs was more of less even in tourist industry while in the related industries, they were concentrated at basic levels .Relatively few women seemed to be employed in garments, probably because it was overwhelmingly dominated by emigrant labor.
TABLE 7: Women in Tourism and Related Industries (1988)
|Subsector |Overall |Level |
| | |Top |Middle |Basic |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
|Tourist |10.8 |10.5 |11.2 |10.6 |
|Related |48.6 |4.6* |2.5* |61.3* |
|Total |20.6 |9.6 |10.8 |25.2 |

Source: NRB, 1989 * Does not include handicraft.
In many of these areas of employment , women are often discriminated and harassed . The most widespread form of biasness shown towards women can be seen in the proportion of pay they get. Despite, they perform similar tasks and work as long as men do, women in Nepal are frequently paid less in comparison to men.

TABLE 8: Female Wage Rates as Proportion of Male Wage Rates (in Rs.)

[pic]

Source: Rashtra Bank Quarterly bulletins for various years

HEALTH
The health status of Nepal’s people is one of the lowest in the South Asian region and this is particularly true for females. According to the 1991 census, female life expectancy is 54 years as against 55 years for men. High birth rates, low life expectancy, high infant and maternal mortality rates and high death rate indicate the poor health status of women. Infant mortality rates and under 5 mortality is higher for the female child (see Table 8). Discrimination in care and nurture, differential socialization, low levels of nutritional intake, poor sanitation and health facilities are some of the leading factors which contribute to higher mortality among female children. Mortality levels (neo-natal, post-natal, infant and child) are higher in rural areas than in urban areas and in the western part of the country as compared to the eastern part

TABLE 9: Selected Development Indicators 1991

[pic] TABLE 10: Maternal Mortality Rate/1000 live births
[pic]
Source: CBS Population Monograph of Nepal 1995
Studies indicate that among the children who survive, the female child is nutritionally worse off than the male. Girls under 5 are at twice the risk of being under-nourished than boys (RIDA 1991). A study on the status of the girl child (RIDA 1991) found more girls (50 per cent) than boys (40 per cent) to be malnourished, anaemic and stunted.

TABLE 11: Sex Differentials in Children’s Nutritional Status
[pic]
Source: Pradhan A., Aryal R.H., Regmi G., Ban B., Govindsamy P., Nepal Family Health Survey, 1996. Kathmandu and Calverton, MD: Ministry of Health, New Era and Macro International Inc.; 1997.

Another high risk factor for women in Nepal is the practice of early marriage and young motherhood. According to Ministry of Health estimates about 60 per cent of girls marry at an age below 18 years. The age at motherhood has declined since 1991 with 42.4 per cent girls being mothers at the age of 19. Problems of malnutrition and small pelvic bones and birth canals also result in stunting among children. Among the older women close-spaced births and a high birth rate keep both mother and child at risk. The 1991 census reports an average of 5.1 children of Nepali women of reproductive age, which reportedly declined to 4.6 in 1996 (MOH 1997). According to the MOH survey (1993) the median birth interval was 34 months.

AUTONOMY
The data reported in the tables below are from a survey conducted in 1998 to assess women’s autonomy and reproductive behavior from two urban areas of Nepal (Niraula and Lawoti 1998) and provide some indication of the extent to which conventional roles are accepted, and shape interactions between men and women.

TABLE 12: Wives’ Perceptions Towards Gender Roles and Duties
[pic]
Source: B.B. Niraula and Dovan Lawoti, 1998
These records clearly indicate that women are less autonomous in case of Nepal . One major reason behind this is the influence of the patriarchal society . Supplementing this cause are others including, lack of education in women, public opinions and sarcasms and the attitude of women themselves.

TRAFFICKING
Trafficking and prostitution in Nepal have historical and traditional roots. These have become a major concern today in the country. Although exact estimates are lacking, it is generally agreed that about 200,000 women and children have been trafficked to India, and forced into prostitution in red light districts in different cities and towns (CWIN, 1998; Asmita, 1998).
In addition to poverty and low status of women, causes of women/girls trafficking are tradition and culture, open borders, a lack of political commitment, lack of effective enforcement of existing laws, the inadequacy of existing laws, and the lucrative nature of the business. Reported cases of trafficking suggest that often the offenders go free because of intricate networking with officials and politicians. Trafficking is common among all caste-ethnic groups in the county.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

The current Constitution, recognizes the socioeconomic disadvantage faced by women, and incorporates specific provisions to provide some political support to women. The Constitution specifies that all political parties must have at least 5 percent female candidates in the election to the House of Representatives, the Lower House, and at least three women in the Upper House. Women's political participation and representation at decision-making levels are two different issues. Participation is a necessary but insufficient condition for representation because representation does not flow automatically from participation. Women all over the world have participated widely in political movements in times of crisis but, once the crisis is over, they are relegated again to the domestic arena.

( ROLES OF WOMEN IN NEPALESE SOCIETY

Female members have always played a commanding role within the family by controlling resources, making crucial planting and harvesting decisions, and determining the expenses and budget allocations. Yet women in Nepal still today live in a society that has limited them within their traditional roles- taking care of most household chores, fetching water and animal fodder, and doing farm work. Their standing in society is mostly contingent on their husbands' and parents' social and economic positions. They have limited access to markets, productive services, education, health care, and local government. Malnutrition and poverty hit women hardest. Female children usually are given less food than male children, especially when the family experienced food shortages.

However the truth cannot be denied that the economic contribution of women was and is still today substantial, though largely unnoticed because of their traditional role. Some of the areas where women have been found to contribute significantly are:

HEALTH AND EDUCATION

Health and education are the basic forms of human capital. They are vital ingredients for both growth as well as development. In most countries, both health and education are lagging behind when it comes to women. Specially, in developing countries the scenario is worse.

However, women do have a much important role in this field than people usually perceive. Educating women means educating her whole family. It is only when the women of the house is educated, the children have more opportunities to study. Moreover, education of women has direct impact on population growth rate by decreasing fertility rate and raising nutritional levels in rural areas. Evidences also suggest a negative relation between education of women and infant mortality rates which clearly highlights the role of women in the health sector.

Similarly, in the context of Nepal educated women have been found to mostly participate in areas such as schooling, banking, nursing etc... The involvement of female manpower in these sectors has not only changed the atmosphere in which they operate but has also enhanced their quality to a large extent.

AGRICULTURE

A large majority of households depend upon agriculture and allied activities such as livestock-rearing and forest product collection. In addition to routine domestic work, women play a significant if not a predominant role in agriculture production. One participatory research project found that women do more work in agriculture than men in the high mountain areas, equal to or more than men in the middle hills and slightly less than men in the terai. Women, both as participants and decision makers, share the responsibility of planting, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, carrying grains to the mill for grinding, including collecting wood, water and fodder Women's involvement is very significant in care and management of livestock and poultry, and kitchen gardening. In the complex social systems of the hills, women's participation in agriculture further varies tremendously across the social groups. Despite women's important role in agriculture, traditional social norms and customary laws which generally are biased in favor of men, are a barrier to women's equitable access to productive resources.

CROP PRODUCTION

Rice, wheat and maize are the major crops of Nepal. Farming systems and crop production in Nepal vary across the agro-ecological zones. Physically, the country is divided into four ecological strata: the southern terai plain; the southern mountain ranges; the central hill complex; the northern great Himalayas. Nepalese women are equally involved in both field and post-harvest work in crop production. Ploughing is considered a man's job, whereas all other work, though shared by men, is mostly undertaken by women. Collecting and carrying compost to the field is normally performed by women Women's involvement is more in producing major crops such as rice, maize, wheat, etc. In both rain fed and irrigated agriculture time spent or devoted by women are 12.36 hours per person per day. Similarly, in irrigated zones women put in 11.61 hours per person per day.

FORESTRY

The forests of Nepal occupy 37.6% of total landmass and are a major natural resource. They supply about 90% of the total fuel and more than 50% of the fodder. Timber and herbs are other important forest products. Women use forest products for creating saleable commodities. Nepalese farming communities and individual farm possess highly integrated and interlinked production systems. Simply, productivity of one system depends greatly upon the productivity of others. Women in rural Nepal have a very close relationship with forests. Collecting fuel wood meets 95% of the cooking-energy consumption. Collecting fodder and other forest products is most tedious and tiring, which has traditionally and primarily been performed by women. Women's task of buffalo raising requires a great deal of daily care year-round. An improved buffalo eats about two head loads of fodder per day, besides prepared feed. More than three-fourths of household time spent collecting forest products is done by women. Women’s are also greatly involved in fish feeding and pond maintenance which require intensive daily management.

LIVESTOCK

Livestock is an important component of the Nepalese farming system providing food for humans, manure for plants, draft power for farms and cash income for farm families. Cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goat, pigs and poultry are the livestock species reared across different agro-ecological zones. In Nepal, women are actively involved in livestock production. Fodder collection, grazing and milking are generally performed by women and also activities like feed preparation, feeding, cleaning sheds and preparing milk products are women's domain. Women have a crucial role in detecting illness of the animal because of their close and frequent contact with them. Marketing of livestock is mainly done by men, but in consultation with women. Women have the right to own livestock in Nepal.

ENVIRONMENT

The degradation of the environment has significantly affected women's lives. As deforestation advances and forest products become increasingly scarce, women are the ones who must walk further a field to collect fuel and fodder, adding hours to their already long work days. But still women are not only performing household managers job but also, formally or informally resource managers job. Women listed that 145 species of plants lost due to deforestation and limestone mining. They were able to categorize the species systematically, according to their utility, spatial and seasonal occurrence, and fodder and fuel qualities. Women take care of farmyard manure collection and application which has an important consequence for soil fertility management In certain parts of the country farmers including women motivated to maintain productive livestock have found innovative ways to manage and conserve wastelands allocated to them.

RURAL PRODUCTION

Livestock, particularly dairy production, is a major source of income for women and sale of livestock and livestock products accounts for nearly 55% of total farm family income. From the early days, weaving has been a part of daily life in the hills and mountains. People in these regions still produce their own version of rugs known as radi, pakhi, and clothing material known as lukuni . Women have intensively involved in informal trade selling food, vegetables and snacks in roadside stalls and local market. Production credit for rural women has supported women's handicrafts as income generating activities such as rice straw paper making, agro-products and handicrafts.

FOOD SECURITY

Women as producers of food and livestock, as well as primary meal makers have an important responsibility to ensure household food security. As primary managers of livestock, women ensure a supply of high quality protein to the country. Women dominate home garden production and thus contribute to improved variety in the family diet. Women's role in fuel collection also has implications for household food security. Nepalese rural women's direct involvement in agricultural production and off-farm tasks contribute to the household food basket.

TOURISM

With the advent of tourism and external interventions many changes have taken place in the lives of women. Now numerous off-farm opportunities are available. For majority of women tourism has been a blessing in disguise. The women themselves are aware that it has created a niche for them for employment opportunities. It has also relieved them of the drudgery related to unpaid farm work. This has been a clear shift in employment for women from farm work to off-farm opportunities such as:

1. Direct tourism-related activities: represented by lodges, tea-shops, cold-drink/consumer stores, and petty trade.

2. Indirect tourism-related activities: consisting of horticulture and vegetable farming, fuelwood selling, alcohol brewing, wage labour, livestock and poultry raising.

With the rising living standards of the women in the area, improvements have been observed in dietary food habits of the local people. Regular vegetables and meat are introduced in their diets. Sanitation and hygiene has improved considerably due to the construction of toilets and rubbish pits.

LIMITATIONS TO THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN NEPALESE ECONOMY

1. Women’s limited access to productive assets — land and property, credit, and modern avenues of knowledge and information — reinforced by unequal inheritance laws and by social norms that confine women’s resource base only to marriage

2. Lack of information on women’s employment and wages, and underreporting or "invisibility" of women’s economic activities

3. Concentration of women in low-productive, subsistence agriculture

4. Concentration of women in low-wage, low-skill, menial jobs in the agriculture and non agriculture sectors, due to lack of education, training, information, and bargaining power

5. High and increasing work burden without concomitant increase in access to resources the "feminization" of the self-employed sector

6. Poor working environment — e.g. concentration at lower level jobs, poor working conditions, lack of child care facilities at workplaces, and trade unions’ lack of awareness of women's problems — and the gaps between law and practice

7. Difficult environment for women entrepreneurs

8. Child labor (girls more than boys)

CONCLUSION
As in most countries of the world, women in Nepal constitute about 50 % of the total population. Though women may be equal in terms of numbers with men they lag far behind in key areas of the economy including education, health, employment , labor force etc…Their high dependency upon men in every aspect of their lives have made them more vulnerable and the males more superior. Patriarchy, still today has its roots in the Nepali society which is manifested mainly by minimum levels of autonomy at the hands of women.
However, there have been signs of improvement in the past few decades manifested in forms of increased participation of women in both formal and informal sectors, increase in female education enrollments and decrease in fertility rates . Infact, the status of women of Nepal in this 21st century is gaining momentum than ever . With the government, international agencies and corporations , NGO’s and INGO’s showing special interest in the role of women, their status have come into the limelight and is taking centre stage in the Nepali society.

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