March 24, 2011
A great challenge for Nepal, one of the worlds’ poorest nations, is to find the means to finance education programs, which reverse age-old superstitions directed toward women.
No superstition is more dangerous to women’s health in Nepal than the belief that females must be isolated during their menstrual cycle and during and after childbirth. (Concerning the latter, women bearing children are banished for up to eleven days away from family members, causing critical danger and increasing complications that can, and do, lead to maternal and child mortality due to excessive bleeding, asepsis, snake bites and other complications.)
The practice of isolating women is called chhaupadi pratha. Nachhunu, the Nepali word for menstruation, also translates as “untouchable”. Even in modern Nepal it is common for women who are menstruating to be considered ‘impure’ and untouchable during the days of their menses. Everything they touch during the time of their menstruation can be considered impure.
In the hinterlands – away from the relative sophistication of urban areas -- the practice of chhaupadi is far harsher, especially for girls who are menstruating for the first time, who have been given no insight into their own sexual development. At the onset of menarche, they suddenly cannot touch any males, including their father and brothers. They cannot cross a bridge. They are barred from entering their own home. They cannot speak loudly. They cannot perform their usual errands as their menses may cause them to “poison” or “taint” whatever they touch. They are banished to rudimentary shelters – often doubling as cowsheds – and left to fend for themselves.
Women News Network (WNN) recently published an article in which Nilima Raut gave an account of her own experience:
I noticed changes occurring in my body and this was a very weird experience for me. Back then, our culture didn’t allow us to talk freely about physical bodily changes, or reproductive or sexual health; even now, the custom remains in my country. . . It was shameful for me to ask my parents about these physical changes and even my mom never told me exactly what would happen in my body as I matured.
Our culture has the superstitious belief that menstruation is the punishment of sins from our previous lives. On “those days”, I was kept away from school and feared what questions my friends and teachers would ask. I saw many of my friends miss school during their menstrual periods; I also saw some friends get married after they started menstruating because they were now considered grown up.
Hypothermia during the cold months and dehydration during the hot months are common health hazards surrounding chhaupadi and have often resulted in death.
The Nepali government has taken some important steps to dispel people’s superstitions. Public health education is definitely making progress. Only this month, for instance, a $15 million program to improve toilets for Nepali women nationwide was introduced.
But there is a long way to go.
Public service advertisements in Nepal television, radio, and newspapers do include information on major diseases, but they don’t include any information to help the public become more aware of health and menstruation hygiene.
A September 2005 Nepal Supreme Court decision ordered the government to enact a law abolishing the practice of chhaupadi, but the court rule has been largely ignored.
“Neither women’s activist groups nor the [Nepali] government have made adequate attempts at addressing these issues”, says Om Prasad Gautam for WaterAid, one of the major on-the-ground organizations working to bring greater awareness of sanitation in Nepal.
Today, chhaupadi continues with impunity in numerous locations, especially in rural Nepal where grinding poverty is the norm. And, according to WNN, extreme and dangerous versions of the ritual still exist in the districts of Chitwan, Kailali, Baitadi, Darchula, Achham, Doti, Bajhang, Dadeldura and Kanchanpur.
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