Gender Gap, Gender Trap: Negotiations of Intersectionality and Patriarchy amongst Women Elites in Nepal

Abstract

Transformation is apparent in Nepal, a country that underwent a decade of civil war 1996–2006, abolished the monarchy to become a republic in 2007, agreed on a new constitution in 2015 and is currently struggling to implement federalism. Decentralisation and minority repre-sentation are being put on the political agenda alongside efforts to rebuild infrastructure dam-aged through two major earthquakes. Beyond this, Nepal appears to have developed into South Asia’s beacon of gender equality. Since 2016 Nepal has had a woman president, a woman chief justice and a woman speaker of parliament. Implementing a quota of 33 per cent women in politics, women politicians now come from a great variety of backgrounds reflecting Nepal’s ethnic, cultural, regional and educational diversity. This study takes the entry of 197 female members into the constituent assembly of Nepal in 2008 as a baseline to study the transforma-tion of “patriarchy” and its impact on the heterogeneous group of women politicians in high office in Nepal.