Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at three national laws/policies that have contributed to closing the gender gap between men and women in Nepal, looking at the major obstacles faced by women activists and their allies in different sectors of life, and the strategies adopted to overcome them.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at three national laws/policies that have contributed to closing the gender gap between men and women in Nepal, namely, the School Sector Reform Plan (SSRP), the Domestic Violence (Crime and Punishment) Act 2009 (hereafter, DV Act), and ensuring inheritance rights for women in the national code. It looks at the major obstacles faced by women activists and their allies in different sectors of life, and the strategies adopted to overcome them, including changing the mindsets of those in authority.

The three cases examined represent policies with very different outcomes with regard to gender relations. The SSRP was an ameliorative policy that did not challenge existing gender norms; the DV Act, although challenging women's subordinate status and the exercise of male power, did not challenge any doctrinal positions; and the law on female inheritance, which required changes in family law as well as changes in customary practices, was gender-transformative, challenged notions of womanhood and societal relations, and required the redistribution of resources within the family.

The paper uses the feminist institutionalist framework to examine how women's rights activists and women politicians shared information, and made use of their personal and institutional relationships to lobby for their agenda. It focuses particularly on the efforts by a group of cross-party women parliamentarians to forge consensus among themselves for one-third representation in the parliament, an endeavor that eventually became successful.