Nepals bleeding shame: menstruating women banished to cattle s...

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/01/nep...

Nepals bleeding shame:

menstruating women banished to
cattle sheds
Though banned, the centuries-old custom of confining women to a cowshed
during their period persists in Nepal, with damaging and even fatal results

Kate Hodal
Friday 1 April 2016 07.00BST

or ve consecutive days each month, Sofalta Rokaya leaves the

bed in her home in western Nepal to sleep among her familys
cows. The stone shed they share is dark and lthy, freezing in the
winter and sweltering in the summer, and littered with hay, muck,
insects and dung.
Sofalta, 16, was terried to tell her parents once she started
menstruating. [It] would mean staying in the cowshed, and I didnt
know if I could do it, she says. I feel horrible here the cow dung
smells and the animals step on us. The dirt and hay get stuck all over
my body.
I wish that I didnt have a period.
Sofalta is one of thousands of girls and women in Nepal who practice
Chhaupadi banishment to a cattle shed or makeshift hut because of
so-called impurity during menstruation or just after childbirth.
Chhaupadi dictates what a woman can eat, where she can sleep, with
whom she can interact, where she can go, and whom she can touch
while she is menstruating. Sofalta is not allowed to enter her house,
cook, touch her parents, go to temple or school, or eat anything but
salted bread or rice as long as she is in the shed.
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The beliefs behind Chhaupadi which are linked to Hindu religion

decree that a woman who disobeys these diktats can bring destruction
and death to her family. If she touches a crop, it wilts; if she fetches
water, the well dries up; if she picks fruit, it doesnt ripen.
If we stay in the house [instead of the shed], we get ill because our
deities dont approve of it, explains Gita Rokaya, another woman from
Sofaltas mountainous village of Sanigaun, in the western district of
Jumla.
We dont want to live like this but our gods wont tolerate it any other
way.
Chhaupadi which translates to untouchable being has been
practised for centuries in Nepal, as well as in parts of India and
Bangladesh, where a yearly festival in August, Rishi Panchami,
involves women purifying themselves with water and prayer for the
sins they commit while menstruating.
Although Chhaupadi was outlawed by Nepals supreme court in 2005,
the practice is still widely observed in the western parts of the country,
where low development rates, gender inequality, community tradition
and high illiteracy all contribute to its continuation, say activists.
According to Radha Paudel, head of the grassroots organisation Action
Works Nepal (Awon), as many as 95% of girls and women in Nepals
mid- and far-reaching western regions practise Chhaupadi, with the
great majority of them banished to cowsheds. Yet Nepalese women all
over the country even Nepalese women abroad still practise the
tradition to varying degrees, she says. In Kathmandu, land is too
expensive how could people have a cow or cowshed? But women still
live separately during their period, even if the family rents only a
single room.
Chhaupadi has been linked to a host of psychological and physical
illnesses. Research by Awon found that 77% of girls and women felt
humiliated during their periods, and two-thirds reported feeling lonely
and scared when staying in cowsheds. Yet the UN also describes
reports of diarrhoea, pneumonia, respiratory illnesses; danger of attack
from snakes, wild animals and drunk men; incidents of abuse and
rape; and high infant and maternal mortality rates, as both mother and
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baby are banished to the shed after birth.

Laxmi Raut described how she and her newborn daughter endured
freezing temperatures in a cowshed after giving birth. She lived until
the 18th day and then died after she suddenly got the u, she says.
After losing her daughter, Raut says her views on Chhaupadi changed.
She now believes women should stay in their own homes instead of
being banished.
Dening menstruation as intrinsically impure and enforcing
restrictions on what women can eat, where they can go and with
whom they can interact clearly amounts to gender-based
discrimination, argues Paudel. She says that despite the 2005 supreme
court ban, and the fact that Nepal is a signatory to the convention on
the elimination of discrimination against women, there is still no
government policy on eradicating Chhaupadi, nor any enforcement on
the ban.
The government doesnt consider it an issue of peace building,
human rights, empowerment or development, she says.
Changing a long-held tradition one supported by family and
community elders, and seemingly sanctioned by ones religion is
extremely complicated, says Sandhya Chaulagain of WaterAid Nepal,
which works with local partners to eradicate the practice. Slowly,
NGOs and activists have been making headway on curbing Chhaupadi,
through education and advocacy programmes that target men, women
and traditional healers, by supporting better sanitation and menstrual
hygiene practices and by using role models.
Certain villages are now Chhaupadi-free zones, while others have
bulldozed their Chhaupadi huts in an eort to promote greater gender
equality.
It is really dicult dealing with the older people in communities that
follow [these] norms myths related to menstrual-hygiene
management that have been practised from generation to generation,
says Chaulagain. So we are focusing our programme on youth, as they
are the change-makers and future elders.

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