Memories of International Women’s Day in Nepal

Four months after I gave birth to my son in Nepal in 1987, I celebrated my very first International Women’s Day in Gunjanagar, a village in western Chitwan District. It was also Gunjanagar’s first time to organize an event for that day. I describe the scene in Sacred Threads, my ethnographic memoir-in-progress:

I looked out from the verandah of the Village Panchayat Office.  I saw at least 150 women clustered on the grass in the compound.  Some sat cross-legged.  Others squatted, their feet flat on the ground. The Brahman and Chhetri women wore red, pink and purple saris.  The Tamang, Gurung, and Magar women wore t-shirts and colorful lungis with flowers and dragons printed on them.   The few Tharu women who sat on the margins in back wore green, white, and black midriff blouses and plain or printed lungis.   Those who could afford it wore their best.  Others wore their faded, torn everyday clothing.  Some of the sukumbasi (landless) women carried their sickles with them ready to return to work after the event.

Shading themselves with black umbrellas and colorful shawls, women squinted at me through the brightness of the noonday sun.  I saw hope in their faces and wondered how to meet it.  The literacy classes had raised expectations. Women talked in them about their need for safe meeting spaces, for ending domestic violence, for work and wages, for education, and for planting trees for more firewood and fodder.  They expressed impatience for these changes….

Inspired by that day, women (with support from many men) organized a campaign to win space from village officials for a meeting and training center.  Some also formed cooperatives for raising and selling goats and intervened in cases of domestic violence and abandonment of unwed mothers.

After 1990, intense party rivalries and then ten years of civil war divided women and sapped energy from the local movement. But much has endured.  It’s mostly carried on in the varied work of women who participated.

Pramila Ghimire, Executive Director of Volunteering to Learn

I see it embodied most clearly in my dear friend (and my son’s cousin) Pramila Ghimire.  She was a teacher in the first literacy class in Gunjanagar and became a leader in the local women’s movement.  Throughout her adult life, she has championed women’s rights to income, health, safety, and education.  She also helped to establish Ajamvari Farm and is an outspoken advocate for sustainable farming in Nepal.

She taught for many years at a school in Kathmandu and recently helped to found Volunteering to Learn.  She is now Executive Director of the organization which promotes opportunities for volunteers and host families and organizations to learn from one another.  Their programs include initiatives in women’s empowerment as well as education and sustainable farming.

Pramila is not only an activist, she’s also a mother of two and a singer/songwriter.  She has a beautiful voice and has taught me many Nepali and Hindi songs.

This International Women’s Day, I salute Pramila and many others like her around the world: unsung heroines, who work with little recognition or money to make the world a better place for all of us.