NEPAL

'Feminisation' is a striking phenomenon of poverty in Nepal. Gender-biased practices, related primarily to access and control over resources especially property rights and inaccessibility to services like health and education have lead to greater poverty and diminished capabilities among Nepalese women.

Nepal is one of the few countries in the world where women have a lower life expectancy than men, a direct reflection of the underprivileged status of women. In most castes and ethnic groups, Nepalese women have both lower status and heavier workloads than men. The overall adult literacy rate in Nepal stands at about 57 percent, but for women it is less than 30 percent.

UNDP supports the development of tools and mechanisms that enable Nepalese women to access, participate and benefit from equitable local planning and governance through programmes that are aimed at empowering women. As a UNDP principle, almost 70 percent of all aid given to relieve poverty in Nepal is directed towards programmes that directly or indirectly benefit women.

The year 2007 was important for advancing gender equality and social inclusion in Nepal. Issues of political representation, citizenship rights, and specific needs of women and other excluded groups surfaced prominently in the preparations of the Interim Constitution, the Three Year Interim Plan and the run up to elections to the Constituent Assembly. The provision of proportional representation in the Interim Constitution for women, Dalits, indigenous ethnic groups, Madhesis and other oppressed groups in state structures was a positive outcome of these advocacy efforts.

A decade of conflict has also awakened development planners and practitioners to look harder into issues of exclusion and inequality and the way in which they are related to development.

As a response, in 2007, a particular emphasis was placed on integrating gender and social inclusion into all of UNDP’s interventions. As a result, all new project documents and concept notes, regardless of their theme, were carefully examined through a gender and social inclusion lens to ensure that issues of gender inequality and social exclusion related to the specific thematic area were adequately addressed.

In UNDP Nepal’s future programmes, the emphasis will be on ensuring that women and excluded groups are specifically targeted in all UNDP-supported initiatives, especially in the areas of livelihoods, governance and HIV/AIDS.