The monthly cycle of menstruation among girls has become an impediment to their pursuit of education in far-western Nepal. For, during periods, school girls are forced to stay at home and not attend school. Laxmi Joshi, who is engaged in community development under Nepal Red Cross Society’s Jogbudha subdivision in Dadeldhura district, some 800 kilometers west of the capital, also never attended school whenever she had periods. Now she encourages girls to go to school even at times of menstruation. “Though teachers would not say anything if we went to school during periods, we feared admonitions from family and others in society. So we missed classes for four days during periods, and missing four days’ classes every month was really alarming.”
Menstruation is a natural phenomenon among teenaged girls, but for those in western Nepal it has become a curse because of superstition. In local dialect, menstruation is called chhau or chhui and menstruating women are kept in solitary confinement, locally known as chhaupadi. There prevails a deep-rooted belief that women that have a period should not touch anyone and, if they do, god will get angry and unleash disaster. What is worse is that in such a condition women are shunned by society.
The practice of chhaupadi adversely affects a woman’s physical and mental health at a time when she requires special care. But its followers do not have any clear answers and scientific logic to offer when questioned about the norms and values of the practice and that why god, whose wrath they dread so much, would unleash disaster. All they say is that they have been loyally following a tradition.
No more better off are the women in Doti district, where women having periods are confined to a small hut not close to their houses. While the practice of keeping menstruating women at some distance from the house is losing ground in districts like Dadeldhura, Baitadi and Bajhang, it is particularly rampant among migrants from Doti, say locals. Most houses in these remote districts of far west Nepal are two-storied; the upper floor is occupied by the family while the ground floor is for its cattle. The practice of keeping menstruating women in the ground floor among animals continues to this day in many parts of this region.
In recent years women are being allowed to use the ground floor instead of having to stay in a separate hut, a change that local intellectuals like to call social reform.
“I feel embarrassed when I have a period, so how can I go to school?” asks an innocent school girl. Says social worker Joshi, “Feeling embarrassed when one has a period is a personal matter. However, family members, instead of sending them to school at such times, maintain that they should not even be allowed to touch books. This very belief has been an impediment to the educational development of girls.”
Indra Bahadur Malla, principal of Sunkuda Higher Secondary School in Bajhang district, says girls can attend classes freely even when they have periods and that the school has no objection to it. “But the problem is that they themselves do not come to school,” says Malla. “If a girl student remains absent for four days, teachers understand that she is having a period but none speaks out on this issue. Because they miss classes during periods, girls are found to be weaker than boys in studies.”
The message that daughters should also be sent to school has spread satisfactorily across the far-west. Of the 379 students of Sunkuda Higher Secondary School in Bajhang, 113 are girls. But statistics show that the number of girls pursuing higher education in the same school is low. The higher the level the lower the number of girls, according to principal Malla. He says other schools in the area are also experiencing the same trend.
Parents tend to think that they have done more than enough by educating their daughters upto only grade two to four. As a result, girls have little access to higher education. Because their mothers are uneducated, girls suffer much physical and mental pain when they have a period. It can easily be concluded that the education of girls has been hit hard by the practice of chhaupadi.
The practice, however, is relatively less severe in urbanised areas. Cadres of the underground CPN (Maoist), which is fighting what it calls “people’s war”, claim that their presence has brought about reforms in the remote settlements of the far-west. After the Maoists launched a campaign against superstitious beliefs and discrimination against women, reforms are gradually happening, claims Sharada, Maoist in-charge of Area-5 of Bajhang district. According to Sharada, the rebel outfit’s women’s wing is crusading against the practice of regarding women as untouchables during menstruation, the dowry system, the jari system (paying fine to wife’s former husband) and other such discriminatory systems. She says, “It is not possible to stamp out at one shot a superstition that has been firmly rooted in the society for centuries; people will slowly understand things. But we have been strictly prohibiting the practice of confining women having a period to a hut at some distance from the house. Similarly, we have been encouraging parents to send their daughters to school even when they have a period, and girls to go to school.”
But the elderly of the villages are yet to realize that the belief that a menstruating woman or girl should not touch anyone and that disaster will strike if they do is only social superstition and does not have an iota of scientific rationale. Joshi succinctly expresses the extent of superstition among them. “Parents are more afraid of committing a sin if their daughters go to school during menstruation than the possibility of the latter failing in exams if they are not sent to school whenever they have a period. This very fear has become a curse to the girls of the far-west.”