The Women's Foundation of Nepal

 

The mission of The Women's Foundation of Nepal (WFN) is to help women and children equally, regardless of caste, religion, or race.

WFN is a non-profit and non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 1988 by a group of Napalese professional women who understood dignity, shared a deep sense of social responsibility, and had a strong desire to address the problems of women in Nepal. The principles which animated the formation of WFN still guide its work today.

WFN strives to alleviate problems through increasing public awareness of opportunities for economic and social development, by fostering social responsibility and self-reliance in developing villages and cities, and through direct social work.

WFN empowers women to improve their lives, strengthen their families, and their communities through practical programs.  WFN unleashes and supports the determination of Nepali women to make the world a better place.

Passing on the Gift empowering Tharu communities

Women's groups in Nepal and other countries are a powerful tool to overcome sometimes oppressive societal forces. And, through Passing on the Gift, women's groups are able to not only improve the lives of themselves but their communities as well.

Panauti Village, Nepal – The deep waters of the Narayani River cut a long line through the Nepalese landscape. Along the banks of this impressive river, local Tharu women struggle against a current of long-standing social traditions.
Girls are excluded from school and expected to stay at home to help with chores. They’re given little access to health care or education. Many women like Bhoj Kumari Mahoto often enter into young marriages, some as young as eleven years old. These challenges fate the women to arduous lives as unyielding as the river's course. By the time Bhoj was just fifteen years old, she had worked as a bonded worker for nine years and had been married twice. After her father died when she was six years old, Bhoj’s mother was forced to send her and her sisters away to perform domestic chores in wealthy homes. Bhoj endured great distress for eight years until she ran away.
When she returned home she was forced to marry twice and pressured to give birth to a son. Her life seemed scripted to a predictable fate. That is until she found the Buhari Mahila Bachat Samuha Women’s Group of Narayani.
Established in 2001 through a collaborative partnership of the Women Feeling Unity Forum (WFUF) and Heifer International, the group focuses on empowering women through education in agriculture, livestock and gender equity. The first group began with 20 members who were given the gift of sheep to generate income and invaluable gender equity education.
“I joined the Heifer/WFUF women’s group when I was expecting my fourth child and received gender training,” Bhoj says. “I convinced my husband that if we could educate our daughters, they could become doctors and engineers and be just as successful as a son. Almost every girl in the village wants to go to school and wants to be educated.”
The group began their project with training and the gifts of two sheep and two breeding bucks. By Passing on the Gift, the women have formed a second group of 20, and each member has passed on not only sheep, but also the immeasurable gifts of education and awareness.
“We used to be known in the village only by our husband’s first name but after our gender equality training, we recognized our own names and understood that we should use them,” says group member Meena Mahoto. “There should also be equal responsibilities for both the husband and wife. Our main group objectives have become self-independence and empowerment.”
Within this entrenched culture, the powerful acts of giving and getting – of Passing on the Gift – have redirected the ebb and flow of seemingly unchangeable waters. As Bhoj says, “After project training, my family started to divide work among themselves and today there is much more unity, peace and harmony among all our families as well as in the community. We are all working together for positive change.”

Women in Nepal

The discussion about the position of women has intensified after the introduction of civil liberties in the early 1990s. A lot of talking is done on the discrimination against women in comparison to male Nepalis. But this has had little consequences towards the legal and social system of the country, so far. Anyway, the decision is to be taken mainly by men, and they find it especially hard to change their approach. It would mean that they, in future, will have to accept women as human beings with equal rights in all matters.

But the government laws and the social rules and traditions are deeply rooted in the microcosm of family and rural community. This is the sphere where the awareness of men and women is shaped in their younger years. And this, exactly, is the place where women can achieve a lot to improve their situation. But little will happen as long as women don’t stick together and, instead, talk negatively about their own gender. They see each other as rivals, look down upon other women and treat them as little girls or only half human beings.

One typical example may be the selection of daughters-in-law. The future mothers-in-law are fishing for every kind of information about their possible daughters-in-law, just like agents do. Of special importance are economic aspects like the wealth of the girl’s parents. In case, the reality does not correspond to their ideals, they will search another bride for their sons. Mothers believe that they must find brides for their sons to make them happy and to bear them children, most of all, sons.

A woman may give up her personal freedom at the age of 18 or twenty and dive into the cold water or she may jump into the fire like Sita did in the classical epic. Important is that she can prove not to have been polluted by any kid of contacts to male beings. Hopefully, Sita’s fire will go out or the wood will remain wet and, so, cannot catch fire. It’s high time that Nepal’s men, too, prove that they are not polluted when they are going to marry a woman.

A woman’s talk will not be taken seriously as long as a woman’s words are only treated as half true. How can the attitude of society be changed if we women don’t take our own sisters for serious? Men will not mind if women talk negatively about each other.

At home, a woman is regarded as source of life. But she should ask: Who is she slaving away for? It has always been so and, thus, it must remain. Women are like seasonal workers: They are sent away in case they are not needed any more, and be it only because they don’t bare sons. Does not biology tell us that a child’s gender depends on the father’s sperm? Nothing will change, as long as the parents educate their children for a two class society: Everything is first and all for the sons, and later they, perhaps, give a little bit to their daughters, two. The reason for the women’s long but futile fight for equality seems to be that a man has something in his trousers, but a women doesn’t.

The women’s lacking emancipation and education is a serious social problem. This problem cannot be solved without providing them economic rights, i.e. equal rights to parents’ property. Without such rights men will continue to decide about women and donate them to other families, just like other properties.

A further necessary step will be to give women the right to chose their own partners for life. Parents claim to be worrying their daughter could be polluted or even have an illegitimate child. So, they are anxious to marry their daughter at a very early age to a husband, selected by them mainly along economic and/or cultural reasons. As a consequence, many girls are not sent to school, become pregnant at a very early age and have to give birth to ten or more children, in case they don’t die in confinement before.

Many men remarry within a few months after the death of their wives. They say this is necessary to take care of household, fields and children. The situation of a widowed woman is totally different. Where is the man interested in marrying such a woman, especially if she has children? No man in Nepal is really interested in this. As a consequence, women often remain unmarried after the death of their husband, not to talk about corresponding religious prejudices.

Handicapped women have no chance at all to find a husband. To make this situation even worse: If the handicap occurs after the wedding, the husband has the legal right to repudiate his wife and marry another woman. Woe betide the woman who would claim the same right for herself!

The children are educated to be very dependent on their parents. Many Nepali man regard their mother as their very special friend and most trusted contact person, but their own wife simply as workforce and breeding ground for their offspring. But is this negative attitude toward women the result of the education which women, i.e. mothers, provide to theirs sons within the family compound? Isn’t it a logical consequence that men educated in this way later in the social and government sphere show little or no understanding for the growing demands of the small circle of educated and emancipated women? If we women really want to move something, then we should strike at the root.