Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC) is a campaign-based organization which functions adopting rights-based approach with the evidence of women’s rights and social justice as a prerequisite for peace, social justice and sustainable development. Since its inception, it has established as a leading national organization working to prevent violence against women, ensure economic, socio-cultural well-being of women and other marginalized groups by promoting their access to rights and social justice. Currently, it has been implementing four themes:

1. Human Rights and Social Justice

2. Ecological Justice and Women’s leadership

3. Quality Care and

4. Learning and Knowledge Management.

All the themes are substantial for creating enabling environment for a just society and social transformation on ending discriminatory social structure guided by the deeply rooted multi-layered patriarchal system. It establishes wide networks from grassroots, national, regional and global arena through vivid alliances and membership. Nepal had ratified CEDAW without any reservation in 1991. CEDAW ,in its Article 18, obliges the state parties to submit the first report within one year of its ratification or accession, and periodic reports in every four years or anytime at the request of the committee. Nepal Government has submitted its 7th periodic report in 2023. This shadow report thus aims to provide recommendations to Nepal government on fulfilling its obligation, particularly in the List of Issues and questions related to the observance of 7th periodic report of Nepal Government at CEDAW committee. This shadow report is prepared in collaboration with more than 100 of NGOs/ CBOs from all seven provinces of Nepal, in line with the government’s recent periodic report focusing on VAW, FMWs, WHRDs, online GBV and women’s health. WOREC, as a member of Human Rights Treaty Monitoring Coordination Centre (HRTMCC) in Nepal, has prepared this report.

The report focuses on five major issues namely Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), Female Migrant Workers (FMWs), Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRD), Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Women’s Health. Some of the processes and documents reviewed for writing this report include:

• Review of Nepal Government’s periodic reports,

• Review of primary data collected at WOREC’s database and desk review

, • Evaluation of CEDAW Committee’s initial observation and past recommendation,

• Assessment of government reports, policies, programs, strategies and plan of action, as well as the constitution, and other laws and regulations,

• Feedback and inputs received from national and provincial consultations on CEDAW shadow reporting,

• Assessment of supplementary inputs from district, provincial, and national-level networks of the WHRDs.

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Voices from the Field: Combating COVID-19 Pandemic in Nepal | Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences (europasianjournals.org)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of human life. In Nepal, a strict lockdown was imposed by the government starting on March 24, 2020. This resulted in all citizens having to be confined to their respective homes. Families who could afford domestic household staff and had arrangements for live-out domestic workers were then left on their own, since the commuting housemaids could not travel to and from work. In this climate of home confinement, the burden of all the household work – ranging from cooking, cleaning, washing, and managing children – most likely fell on the women in the household.

We postulated that one of the consequences of the lockdown is an increased workload for women in the household. For the purpose of assessing this hypothesis, we designed and implemented an online survey (spanning 3-5 minutes), and also conduced telephone interviews with respondents who did not have access to the internet. We collected data for eight days in early May (in 2020). We obtained a total of 317 responses from 29 districts in all seven provinces in Nepal.

The average age range of the survey respondents was 21 to 35 years. Three-fourths of the respondents were married women. Just over 50% of the women had completed a post-bachelor degree. A large percentage of them were engaged in the non-governmental (NGO) sector.

Obviously, the survey included responses only from those women who wished to respond, and had access to the internet or a telephone, and furthermore, were interested in responding to the request. Mindful of this limitation in the data obtained, we summarize the main findings that emerged from the survey below.

Nearly half (48%) of the women reported that household/ care work during the lockdown has been challenging because of the increased work burden. Similarly, 47% of the respondents stated that they also had to extend their office work hours. Nearly two-thirds (65%) claimed that balancing work for both home and professional career had been a challenge. Further, the working office hours were extended for the majority of unmarried women. However, doing household work had been comparatively more challenging to married women than single women (50% v 32%). Overall, the overwhelming

majority of the women (80%) reported increasing their working hours, from one hour to more than four hours.

Nearly one in 10 women did not get any help from their family members in undertaking household chores. Consequently, they needed to increase their workload, particularly during the lockdown. Nearly half (47%) reported that they had the burden of multi-tasking. Likewise, one-third felt they had an increase in stress. They also stated that other family members were expecting all the household chores to be done by them. Some women (4%) also experienced having to spend a lot of time dealing with an abusive spouse.

Despite having had the additional burden of household chores during the lockdown, the overwhelming majority of respondents (82%) felt that they did not have any particularly bad experience, but that they had a good experience in being together with family and being confined in the house. Three out of five respondents felt that they were protected from the coronavirus by being confined to their homes. They did not have to spend time commuting to and from work, they were able to apply their discretion in managing office work from home, and they were able to balance and manage time between home and office work while at home.

The lockdown also adversely affected  the  health  of the respondents. Nearly two in five reported having faced some kind of psychological health issues. About 31% reported having had physical health issues, and additional one in 10 reported to have experienced sexual and reproductive health issues.

The above data make it clear that the protracted lockdown period in Nepal has placed an additional burden on women, and particularly on married women. The women were multitasking as a coping mechanism to accomplish the work of both home and office during the lockdown. It is also clear that the women have felt additional stress, and have experienced additional mental and psychological health problems during the lockdown period.

Clearly, domestic work is still considered a gendered work; primarily a female’s work, and married women share more burden than single women in their households. Conscious efforts, through discussions and awareness, need to be made so that domestic work such as cooking and cleaning are not a gendered role, but rather viewed and treated as basic life skills. Such an orientation can and should begin with the family at an early age. Expectedly, a change can come about easier and faster in urban and educated households, than in the more rural and less educated households.

Communities and public entities should be engaged in addressing the inequalities and identifying strategies for reforms. It does take time for the century-old gender- based roles in the organization and management of households and community to shift, but it is never too early to begin making changes in the right direction. The data, as presented here even with its limitations, stress the areas that need attention. The current pandemic has provided the opportunity to revisit some of the areas of gender inequalities. If anything, the confinement period during the pandemic has aggravated the inequalities and inequities even more strikingly.

https://www.europasianjournals.org/ejms/index.php/ejms/article/view/307/151

Publication Date: Feb 2013

https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.justassociates.org%2Fsites%2Fjustassociates.org%2Ffiles%2Ffeminist-movement-builders-dictionary-jass.pdf

[Note: This publication category enlists the publications with citation to WOREC’s work and are published by external journals, authors and publishers. Files are linked to original publisher/author and are not hosted by WOREC]

https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcollections.sit.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D4008%26context%3Disp_collection

[Note: This publication category enlists the publications with citation to WOREC and published by external journals, authors and publishers.]

https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com%2Ftrack%2Fpdf%2F10.1186%2Fs12889-019-6967-y

DOI:10.1332/policypress/9781447324775.003.0009

This chapter presents a case study of the unique role played by a women’s NGO in actively supporting agency, self-representation, and alliance building among marginalised women. The case study focuses on the NGO’s role as an incubator in promoting identity-based associations (IBAs) that represent and assert the rights of particular groups of marginalised and/or stigmatized women such as trafficking survivors and women working in the entertainment sector, e.g. dance bars, duet restaurants and massage parlours. The presented case demonstrates that IBAs can be empowered to address their own issues as long as NGOs and other supportive parties provide adequate input for provisional capacity building. Finally, the article underscores challenges to and prerequisites for enabling other NGOs to play such a role, to serve as a resource for other civil society organisations.

From book: Women’s Emancipation and Civil Society Organisations: Challenging or Maintaining the Status Quo? Edited by Christina Schwabenland, Chris Lange, Jenny Onyx and Sachiko Nakagawa. Bristol: Policy Press, 2017, 388 pp

Read the full chapter:

https://www.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1332/policypress/9781447324775.001.0001/upso-9781447324775-chapter-009

Women’s Emancipation and Civil Society Organisations

Source ALRC

Published 25 Feb 2011

Security and protection of Women Human Rights Defenders in Nepal -…