Examines the socio-economic status of women in Nepal, including issues of education, gender-based violence, access to political and administrative decision-making, and rural infrastructure, with the aims of eliminating gender inequality and empowering women.

This book sheds new light on the important but diverse roles of women in the decade-long civil war in Nepal (1996-2006), and the equally long post-conflict reconstruction period (2006-16).

Assuming that women’s empowerment would accelerate the pace of social change in rural Nepal, the World Bank urged the Nepali government to undertake a “Gender Activities Project” within an ongoing long-term water-engineering scheme. The author, an anthropologist specializing in bureaucratic organizations and gender studies, was hired to monitor the project. Analyzing her own experience as a practicing “development expert,” she demonstrates that the professed goal of “women’s empowerment” is a pretext for promoting economic organizational goals and the interests of local elites. She shows how a project intended to benefit women, through teaching them literary and agricultural skills, fails to provide them with any of the promised resources. Going beyond the conventional analysis that positions aid givers vis-à-vis powerless victimized recipients, she draws attention to the complexity of the process and the active role played by the Nepalese rural women who pursue their own interests and aspirations within this unequal world. The book makes an important contribution to the growing critique of “development” projects and of women’s development projects in particular.

In this paper, we explore how different norms around property rights affect the empowerment of women of different social positions over the life cycle. We first review the conceptual foundations of property, empowerment, and intersectionality, and then present the methodology and empirical findings from ethnographic field work in Nepal. Going beyond formal ownership of property, we look at changes in property rights over personal and joint property at different stages of women’s lives. Finally, the paper makes recommendations for how research and development projects, especially in South Asia, can avoid misinterpreting asset and empowerment data by incorporating nuance around the concepts of property rights over the household life cycle

Contributed articles.

Inspired by Blackwell & Ruth's 200 Women Who Will Change The Way You See The World (2017), Fifty Women from Nepal is about the power of stories. In a world where we increasingly need to hear, connect and learn from each other, Fifty Women provides original interviews, asking the same six, seemingly simple, questions alongside photographic portraits. It is a platform for women's voices through the lens of a country which is often perceived as poor but which is bursting with incredible women who are changing the conversations around global issues of relevance to us all. After being involved in the 200 Women project and seeing 4 Nepali women star alongside some of the world's biggest stars, the editors were stirred by an idea. Why don't we do a '50 Women from Nepal' version to showcase some of the amazing women in Nepal? The world needs to hear their stories to connect us on issues which affect us all; Nepali girls and women need to hear their stories to give them hope.