Paper short abstract:

Urban Nepali womanhood & sexuality are practised through local understandings of ijjat (honour). Premarital relationships are often met with disapproval due to the dishonour they bring families. Thus women negotiate romance in peripheries where they can forge modern subjectivities of their choosing.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, based on two years of fieldwork in urban Nepal, will argue three points about urban Nepali womanhood and women's romantic relationships. Firstly, I argue that an urban Nepali womanhood is practised and understood fundamentally through local understandings of what it means to have ijjat (honour). This is grounded in so-called 'traditional', local understandings of what it means to be a 'good' woman. This notion is also predicated on the fact that women's behaviour not only garners honour for herself, but also her kin. Secondly, ijjat is explicitly linked to women's chastity and their mobility. Women's behaviour and movements are routinely surveilled by family and the wider community, in order to control women's sexuality. Having pre-marital relationships is not traditional practice for Nepalis, and dating is seen as damaging to a woman's ijjat, and therefore to that of her family. Accordingly, being seen in certain spaces carries with it the responsibility of being seen in the 'right' ways. As such, I finally argue that dating in urban Nepal can be characterised by practices of negotiation. Women negotiate pre-marital sexual practice, by evading surveillance and seeking out peripheral spaces with their (potential) partners. These peripheries, or 'out-of-the-way', spaces are locations where less social governance occurs. Therefore, couples, and especially women, can escape gendered pressures and forge modern, sexual subjectivities of their choosing.