Period shaming in Nepal: new law may finally end practice of banishing menstruating women
Last year, Nepal announced a ban on chhaupadi – the age-old tradition of exiling women to huts during menstruation – but authorities face an immense challenge in implementing the new law when it comes into effect in August
The memory of her first period makes Ganga Kunwar shiver. “It was already scary to think of the physiological change I was about to experience, but what terrified me the most, and still does when I think about that time, was that I was going to be kicked out of home for the first time,” she tells Post Magazine.
At the age of 12 she was considered impure and, following the ancient practice of chhaupadi, banished. “I had to respect the tradition; I was being forced to live in a mud-and-brick shed for five days,” says Kunwar, now 30.
The hut was about 70 metres from the family home, measured just two metres by a metre, and had no door. “I was so afraid to stay there alone that I climbed a tree and stayed there for four days, until my mum came to the rescue,” Kunwar says.
Her mother knew Ganga had gone against tradition by not sleeping in the shed, known as a goth in Nepalese, but played it down. Unfortunately, some of their neighbours in Payal, a small mountain village in the western Nepalese district of Achham, were less forgiving.
“Soon everybody knew, and they started to blame me for all evils. If someone got sick, it was my fault. If a tiger killed cattle, it was my fault. For a while, I lived in hell,” says Kunwar, who has never refused to be segregated again.
When not pregnant, every month, Kunwar stays in the goth for five days, when her period comes; the first menstruation after giving birth requires a 13-day stay, with her newborn. During these times, although she can step out of the goth, she is not allowed to touch men or cattle, she can’t cook or even enter the kitchen – she will be fed only rice, salt and cereals – and she can’t enter religious buildings or attend ceremonies. She must wash herself far from the water used by the other villagers. Conveniently enough for the men, though, she is permitted to work in the fields.
