Status and Issues of Indigenous Women in Nepal

1. Status and Issues of Indigenous Women in Nepal Presentation by Dr. Sumitra Manandhar Gurung November 25, 2008

2. Ethnographic Map of Nepal

3. Situation of Indigenous Women • Identity of Indigenous Women and their concerns not well recognized • Unreached by Development Processes and denied of basic of Human Rights, i.e. education, health, services, • Data not available to demonstrate how Indigenous Women are affected by conflict or displaced by structure of state, governance • Disparity among different Indigenous women’s groups is also a reality

5. Some Notable Achievements from Women’s Movement in recent years: • 33 % in Constituent Assembly • Citizenship • Legal Rights to Property, wife rape.. • Bill tabled Violence Against Women • Agreement against alcoholism and related violence • 4 million women in different Groups including Micro-Finance

6. In spite of progress made situation of Indigenous Women remains to be unchanged at large An attempt to give a snap shot of the situation of Indigenous Women through data gathered from 35 groups of Indigenous Women representatives

7. Status of Literacy Among Indigenous women

8. Size of population and literacy level varies among different groups • Literacy level is 25% in average for Indigenous women, ranging from 0% to 80% • 14% on average have high school level education, 4% have bachelors, and 1% have masters level It shows that 96% Indigenous Women have lower level of education to enter into decision making level positions in the government Language barrier inhibits them to get education

9. Food Sufficiency Among Indigenous Women and Access to Health services/reliance on Traditional healing

10. Food Sufficiency: • 20% or 6/35 groups have food adequate for 3 months in year • 11/35 groups (33%) have food adequate for 6 months • 15 groups (40%) have food adequate for 6 to 12 months • 3/35 groups (8.5%) have food adequate for 12 months Access to Health Service: • 10% women get access to health services • 90% rely on traditional medicine due to lack of service and availability of knowledge to cure in some cases

11. Survival Occupations of Indigenous Women

12. Almost all Indigenous Groups’ occupation were agriculture but due to mobility and displacement from traditional lands, survival require resorting to a combination of 3-5 types of works, i.e. • Agriculture, labor works and livestock; agri and weaving, basket making, knitting; agri and fishing, boating; agri and trade, remittances; horticulture and medicinal herbs trade etc. • Very few cases of service and teaching or other white color jobs as occupations of Indigenous women

13. Brahmin / Chettri: 65 Janajati: 61 Madeshi: 37 Dalit: 23 Muslims: 04

14. Women representation in political party 2006/7 Caste/Ethnicity Wise Brahmin / Chettri: 19 Janajati: 6 Madeshi: 5 Dalit: 2

15. Female Caste EthnicityWise Brahmin / Chettri: 73 Janajati: 45 Madeshi: 8 Dalit: 5 Total: 606 Male: 475 Female: 131

16. Situation of Indigenous Women depicts there is violation of UNDRIP: • Art 10, removed from land and territories, • Art 14, education system and in own language • Art 18, participation in decision making • Art 21, right to improve economy, edu, health and social security..

17. Recommendations • State to develop the system to disaggregate data by gender/caste and ethnicity at all levels • State to develop systems to access education, health service and resources to promote economic activities for sustaining livelihood of indigenous peoples • State to abide by the commitment to adopt measures that ensures full and effective participation of Indigenous women in the implementation, follow-up work and monitoring of BPfA and MDG • State to ensure proportional representation of Indigenous women in all constitutional and government bodies.

18. Thank you