Welcome Speech

Dev Raj Dahal, FES

"Gender Experience in Nepal-Idea Exchange" organized for the partner organizations of FES, by FES Nepal office, September 26, 2003.

Basic Values

The mandate for Nepal office of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) for the next few years is focused on two broad goals: democratization and crisis prevention and conflict resolution. They are also regarded as the upper targets. Within this mandate, the workshop today intends to discuss on the works we have done together in the fields of media, academia and trade unions in achieving gender integration in all the activities of our organizations, to be self-critical where we are weak and elaborate the policy of what is to be done. In a way, it is an effort to seek an improvement in the quality and quantity of our works sensitive to the liberal politics of gender equality.
FES through its partner organization has already begun the journey to civic education purporting to alter the hitherto patterns of youth socialization. This is our conscious effort to help transform the Nepalese people into public, the object into a sovereign subject so that institutions and public life remain equally open to both women and men. Production and dissemination of alternative knowledge is expected to open up the prospects for the continual negotiation of social contract with the political, economic and civil societies. Recent focus on gender analysis will further help the peaceful negation of patriarchy. Modernity's systematic revolt against pre-political boundaries and the continuous democratization of private sphere have offered resources for deliberative politics.

Men's Liberation

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal and Nepalese commitment to various human rights instruments envision the creation of open, just and democratic society based on freedom and social justice. These documents form a part of our political consciousness, upon which liberation claim is made on behalf of Nepalese women. This liberation is more than allocating social welfare benefits. It refers to the freedom, the inclusion of women, and the implementation of basic human rights by means of removing all barriers to their fulfillment. Freedom, however, is not context free. A shift from women's promotion to gender studies has now become a central concern in redefining gender and sex in various discourses and interactions which foretells women's fulfillment, through men's liberation.

Cultural Reconstruction

Gender identity and gender relations are social construction jelled around biological differences of human beings. Identity politics, in this sense, is a conscious attempt of female folk to expunge the prevailing gender dualism and the dilemma as to whether women should confine themselves within "feminine" sphere of private life or enter into public domain of security, politics, economics and culture. Deconstruction of the structural inequality springing from weak voice and visibility and poor representation of women in knowledge, research and discourses equally requires their participation in political communication because it provides a space in which citizens, irrespective of gender distinctions, can define equal status. Politics is the only public space where modernist revolt against fatalism captures democratic spirit and underlines a distinction between what is biological and what is cultural in the construction of women and men. Women's search for freedom and equality does not signal the downfall of our society, rather it marks the erosion of those irrationalities of our society that are incompatible with democratic aspirations.
Integration of gender perspective in the policies of the donors, the government, market institutions and civil society is, therefore, crucial to achieve not only social integration but also easy external adaptation of our national society. Among other things, gender equality dramatizes how the social history of "conformist" culture has given way to a political spirit of rational choice. Democratic equality has become an attractive model for women to achieve their will, a will to achieve gender and inter-generational justice.

Social Movement

The rise of social movements of women evokes poetic power, which animates their democratic plays in the rhythm of a struggle against the shadows of their pasts and a search for future possibilities. Inspired by social and technological change, the organized power of women's movement is generating a faster process of collective action than any comparative period in Nepal's history. Located within civil society, this movement involves the contestation of the dominant knowledge, institutional and cultural patterns. The search for public space, political power, resource and identity is steered towards achieving peaceful transformation at the level of the superstructure of society. Political power is essential to redress inequality and strive for autonomy. It implies an underlying notion of the way political system and culture change in response to such factors as gender equality.

Democratization

Gender has been constructed differently in various historical periods. It underwent transformations with the change in human consciousness and the nature of power and political economy. The images of men and women in the mass media, schools and universities, carried during different periods of history, articulate the fact that ideas and ideologies have also played key roles in socialization, cultural formation and symbolic representation. Any discussion on gender thus invites a global and national sense of responsibility towards addressing the grievances derived from inequality and injustice. Equality of gender is thus crucial to help shape human consciousness and accelerate democratization, non-violent social transformation and peace. To make Nepalese politics more and more democratic requires the involvement of larger groups of people, including women for sovereignty springs from them. Democratization requires the participation of affected parties. Nepalese women are, therefore, looking for a more conscious life, a life that puts the mind open to historical imagination and experience of their present condition.

Empowerment

How is this equality achieved? One is redefining the notion of power. All knowledge is grounded in power relations, including that knowledge, which shapes social life, institutionalizes patriarchy and legitimizes the cultural formation. The other is mutual understanding of roles by both male and female members of society. How power springs up and whom it belongs to depends very much on how its balance is changed. Because, here, power is regarded as a means to the empowerment of male and female. And empowerment is related to various measures of capacity building. In other words, capacity building means providing critical resources for development to those who need them the most. Gender clearly comes into the agenda.
In our context, FES's policy to integrate the concept of gender in most of its activities, especially media, trade unions and democracy and development projects is a response to our national and global imperatives and obligations. The rationale behind it is to make the future of women more and more open and predictable than letting the past determine their future.