Nepali women have political visibility but are denied political power

On why and how women are consistently sidelined in the Nepali political process

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from Kathmandu. This is Issue 230 of Kalam Weekly, the only newsletter you need to keep updated with everything happening in Nepal.

In honor of Women’s Month, we have a special deep dive for you — a concise but illuminating account of Nepali women in politics and the reasons why they keep getting sidelined in the political process. Shreeti KC writes about history, but also about what is currently unfolding after the Gen Z revolution and the March 5 election. Read the full story in the deep dive below.

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In this newsletter:

• Sushila Karki’s outgoing appointments draw criticism

• RSP holds orientation program for its lawmakers

• China protests burning of Xi Jinping’s book

• The deep dive: Nepali women have political visibility but are denied political power

Sushila Karki’s outgoing appointments draw criticism

After the successful completion of the March 5 election, interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki, the country’s first woman prime minister, won plaudits for her six-month tenure. The mainstream media published editorials praising her, and social media was rife with posts commending her sensitive handling of the critical period right after the Gen Z protest in September last year. But just as the commendations were peaking and her tenure coming to an end, Karki made long-term appointments that tarnished her stellar reputation.

On Sunday, March 15, Prime Minister Karki appointed her personal secretary, Adarsha Kumar Shrestha, as chair of the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), and the current Home Minister, Om Prakash Aryal, to the National Assembly. While the latter appointment is believed to have been made in consultation with the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), the largest party in the soon-to-be convened House of Representatives, the former was made solely at Karki’s discretion. Aryal, who was legal advisor to Balen Shah during his tenure as mayor of Kathmandu, likely received the RSP's stamp of approval, as Shah is a senior leader and the next prime minister of the country.

Shrestha’s appointment has been the more controversial of the two, since the position has a five-year term and should ideally have been left up to the new government. Critics have questioned Shrestha’s credentials and his close relationship with Karki, which goes back to her time as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Karki was instrumental in numerous promotions that Shrestha received while at the Supreme Court, eventually joining her as personal secretary after she took charge as interim prime minister. In personal conversations, Gen Z activists criticized Shrestha’s gatekeeping and his prioritization of certain individuals over others. Shrestha even inducted his wife, Sangeeta Shrestha, into the prime minister’s secretariat until widespread criticism forced Karki to remove her.

Shrestha has no experience or background in conservation to lead an institution like the NTNC, which oversees numerous national parks and conservation areas, while also working in community-based conservation and addressing climate change adaptation. The organization is also responsible for managing the Central Zoo in Lalitpur. It appears that Karki chose to reward Shrestha for his work with a nepotistic appointment, one of the key issues the Gen Z movement protested. Even Mahabir Pun, an independently elected parliamentarian and former Minister for Education, Science and Technology in the Karki Cabinet, lambasted the appointment, calling it “100 percent wrong” and asking Shrestha to step down. Shrestha has made no public comments and appears to be waiting for the outrage to die down. There is no indication that he will step down.

RSP holds orientation program for its lawmakers

On Tuesday and Wednesday, March 17-18, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) held a residential orientation program for its lawmakers at the Royal Tulip Hotel in Lalitpur. A majority of the RSP’s 182 lawmakers are first-time parliamentarians, and thus, an orientation program was deemed necessary to educate them on the roles and responsibilities of a member of the House of Representatives.

Just days before the program, Ashika Tamang, a newly elected RSP representative, had ordered the local governments in Dhading district to cease collecting road taxes. The chiefs of all 13 local governments then issued a joint statement, refusing to abide by Tamang’s unlawful order and warning against attempts to violate the rights accorded to local governments by the Constitution. They were right, as Tamang, although elected from Dhading-1, cannot issue executive orders to anyone, let alone to largely autonomous local governments. As of now, Tamang is a legislator, and her responsibilities include making and amending laws, overseeing the executive government, and raising issues from her constituency in Parliament.

The RSP’s orientation program, thus, appeared necessary. It was also a chance for all the RSP’s lawmakers, both directly elected and proportional representatives, to meet and get to know one another. All of the RSP’s legislators were present, except for one glaring absence — Balen Shah. The future prime minister did not deign to attend the program, raising questions about his commitment to the party structure and his attitude towards his own party's parliamentarians. While his supporters said that Shah was busy deciding his Cabinet of Ministers, the party’s senior leadership — chair Rabi Lamichhane and vice-chairs Dol Prasad Aryal and Swarnim Wagle — found the time to attend and talk to lawmakers. Shah is surely not picking his Cabinet ministers all by himself, and if not, perhaps his refusal to interact with other party members shows that the unidirectional, ‘my way or the highway’ approach to governance he displayed as Kathmandu mayor will continue while prime minister.

Party chair Lamichhane, however, has adopted a noticeably different approach. In his speech to legislators, Lamichhane deviated from his normally aggressive style, instead stressing the burden of responsibility and asking his party members to treat other parties with respect. He further asked RSP members to conduct themselves with care and discipline, promising that the party would implement a ‘right to recall’ provision that would allow voters to recall any underperforming representatives. He cautioned legislators against dealing with middlemen and warned that any hint of corruption would result in disciplinary action from the party. The speech was widely praised on social media, but it remains to be seen if Lamichhane’s promises will truly be implemented.

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A warm welcome to everyone who discovered this newsletter in the past few weeks, as international attention turned once again to Nepal over Balen Shah and the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s impressive electoral win. As we move towards covering this new government with an unprecedented mandate, we’d like to remind you that Kalam Weekly relies on the generosity of our readers. We have no ads, no deep-pocketed backers, no corporate machinery. If you value the insight we bring you every week, please consider supporting us with a paid subscription by clicking the button below or scanning the QR code with your Nepali bank app.

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China protests burning of Xi Jinping’s book

On Saturday night, March 14, a video surfaced on social media showing a large-scale book burning at Manmohan Memorial Polytechnic College in Biratnagar, Morang district. In the video, an individual holds up a copy of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s book, The Governance of China, before tossing it into the fire. The next day, the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu sent a note verbale — a formal but unsigned diplomatic note — to the Foreign Ministry, asking for clarification and action against the perpetrators. In response, Home Minister Om Prakash Aryal ordered the Morang district administration to conduct an investigation.

The college’s administrators professed no ill will towards China or Xi Jinping, saying that many books, not just The Governance of China, had been destroyed as they were infested with termites and the college needed to clear storage space. However, the books shown in the video do not appear damaged or termite-infested; in fact, they look glossy and new. A BBC Nepali news report surmises that the books were possibly donated to the college as it was set up and is run by communists from the CPN-UML party. Ishwar Pokhrel, the UML general secretary, is the current president of the college. Even now, the college has 10-12,000 copies of the book, an official told the BBC.

The Chinese are upset; they see something nefarious here. They haven’t been pleased with Nepal. A Chinese company has been named in a corruption case involving the Pokhara International Airport, activists with Tibetan roots were active during the Gen Z protests, and conspiracy theories swirl about how Western powers orchestrated the fall of KP Sharma Oli for getting too close to the Chinese. But their fears are unfounded. I believe Hanlon’s Razor is apt here: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

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The deep dive: Nepali women have political visibility but are denied political power

By Shreeti Kc

Out of the 165 parliamentarians elected through the direct election on March 5, only 14 are women, just 8.5 percent.

Thirteen of these victories came from the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and one from the Nepali Congress, leaving major parties that had long championed inclusion and representation, like the Madhesi parties and the Maoists, without a single woman elected through direct contests. Part of this outcome may lie in the RSP fielding several strong women candidates in competitive constituencies, but it also reflects the party’s unexpected electoral surge.

Nepali women, who make up more than 51% of the population, have fought long and hard for due representation and inclusion. They have been present at nearly every political turning point, from the anti-Rana movement of the 1940s to the two People’s Movements and the Maoist insurgency. Yet, that history of participation has not translated into equal representation in elected institutions.

As March is women’s month, this article will explore a brief history of women’s political participation and why, despite over a century of demanding fair representation, women continue to be sidelined in the political process.

Birth of the women’s movement

The roots of Nepal’s women’s movement can be traced to early acts of resistance against societal taboos and the Rana regime. As early as 1918, a group of women activists, including Dibya Koirala, Yogamaya Neupane, Mohan Kumari Koirala, and Purna Kumari Adhikari, founded the Mahila Samiti, an organization that challenged social stigmas and sought to uplift the status of women. The organization was short-lived, ceasing activities less than a year later when Koirala’s husband, Krishna Prasad, was exiled to India.

Neupane and others, however, carried the spirit of the Samiti. Neupane, a social reformer from Bhojpur, challenged entrenched social and religious injustices and submitted a petition of 268 demands to Prime Minister Juddha Shumsher Rana, calling for women’s rights and social reform. When these demands were ignored, Yogmaya and 67 of her followers, including her daughter Naina Kala, protested in 1941 by collectively jumping into the Arun River. Their act of defiance is widely regarded as one of the earliest sparks of the women’s movement in Nepal.

By the 1940s, women were active participants in Nepal’s democratic awakening. As political opposition to the Rana oligarchy grew, women helped form early political parties. Dibya Koirala’s sons, Matrika Prasad, Bishweshwar Prasad, and Girija Prasad, along with others, would found the Nepali Congress in Kolkata in 1947. Motidevi Shrestha, a leftist activist from Kathmandu, was among the five founding members of the Communist Party of Nepal in 1949.

Prominent women activists like Sadhana Pradhan, Sneh Lata, Kanak Lata, and Nani Maiya participated in the 1947 civil liberties movement against the Rana regime and were even arrested.

Yet, this early political mobilization did not translate into institutional power or even political representation. When Nepal held its first parliamentary election in 1959, only one woman entered Parliament — Dwarika Devi Thakurani from Dadeldhura — exposing the enduring gap between women’s activism and their representation in political institutions.

From family to state in the Panchayat Era

If the 1950s exposed the gap between women’s activism and representation, the Panchayat era institutionalized it. King Mahendra dissolved parliament in 1960 and banned political parties, paving the way for the Panchayat years (1961 to 1990) of “guided democracy” — a system of ostensibly village-based democracy “suited to the Nepali soil,” but which functioned in reality as a repressive political system that concentrated power in the monarchy. Within this structure, women were incorporated as participants in state-led social development programs. Through the Nepal Women’s Organisation (NWO), women were mobilized for activities such as literacy campaigns, maternal and child health programs, family planning initiatives, cottage industry promotion, and community development projects. These programs expanded women’s visibility in public life and were often framed as part of the Panchayat regime’s development agenda.

However, this mobilization rarely translated into political power. The Panchayat system restricted independent political organizing and tightly controlled representation within its institutions. Women’s organizations were also structurally subordinate to the state, operating as auxiliary bodies rather than autonomous political platforms. As a result, women were encouraged to participate in welfare and development programs but remained largely absent from decision-making positions within the Panchayat political hierarchy.

The legal reforms in the revised Muluki Ain (1963) introduced provisions restricting polygamy and granting daughters limited inheritance rights. Yet under the Partition Law, daughters could inherit property only if they remained unmarried until the age of 35. Polygamy was criminalized in principle but permitted under several exceptions, including infertility or illness of the wife. These provisions illustrate the broader logic of Panchayat-era governance: women’s social welfare was recognized, but their political agency remained tightly constrained. Political scientist Sierra Tamang argues that the Panchayat era played a central role in the structuring of a particular form of patriarchy — a shift from “family patriarchy” to “state patriarchy.” The result was a form of managed inclusion that expanded women’s participation in development activities while preserving male dominance within formal political institutions.

Hard-fought reforms in the multi-party years

Following the restoration of democracy in 1990, women activists and political leaders pushed to incorporate gender equality into the new constitutional framework. Advocacy by women’s organizations and leaders such as Sahana Pradhan and Shailaja Acharya helped bring issues of equal rights and representation into public debate. The 1990 Constitution subsequently guaranteed equal pay for equal work, introduced reforms related to women’s property rights, and required political parties to nominate at least five percent women candidates for the House of Representatives. This marked a significant shift from the “managed inclusion” of the Panchayat era toward formal legal equality.

Yet, electoral outcomes revealed the limits of these reforms. In the 1991 and 1994 elections, only seven women were elected out of 80 and 86 candidates, respectively, rising to twelve in 1999 despite 143 women contesting, a persistent gap between women’s candidacy and their ability to win seats. Although parties complied with the constitutional requirement to field women candidates, the Democracy Resource Center Nepal, a research institute, writes that most were nominated in constituencies where victory was unlikely.

Intersectional leadership during the Maoist insurgency

The Maoist insurgency marked the most dramatic expansion of women’s political participation in Nepal’s modern history. Framing gender inequality as a product of “feudal patriarchy,” the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) actively mobilized women as fighters, organizers, and political cadres. Estimates suggest that women made up roughly 30–40 percent of the People’s Liberation Army. For many women, particularly from marginalized Janajati, Dalit, and rural communities, the insurgency offered an unprecedented pathway out of restrictive social hierarchies. Many argued that women joined the movement because they had endured both class and gender oppression, giving them “double the capacity to revolt.”

Yet, the insurgency also raised difficult questions about agency and exploitation. While some educated women leaders were welcomed into the movement, Maoist leadership often expressed suspicion toward “bourgeois intellectuals,” fearing reformist deviation. At the same time, the large influx of young women, many reportedly aged 15 to 18, also raised questions about the extent to which participation reflected political empowerment or the mobilization of vulnerable youth within a militarized movement.

At the same time, the Maoist movement also transformed the social composition of women entering politics. Unlike earlier generations of women leaders, who largely came from urban and relatively privileged Khas-Arya or Newa backgrounds, the insurgency brought women from Janajati and marginalized rural communities into the political mainstream. Figures such as Onsari Gharti Magar, who later became Nepal’s first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, emerged from the ranks of the Maoist movement, reflecting how the insurgency expanded the social base of marginalized women’s political participation.

Yet this expansion had its limits. While women were on the battlefield and in local organizing structures, leadership and negotiation spaces remained overwhelmingly male-dominated. The contradiction was evident when Maoist delegations to peace talks in 2001 and 2003 consisted entirely of men. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2006 between the Maoists and the government, positions of power were given primarily to men. While women’s participation in the Maoist movement informed demands for 33 percent representation in Parliament, it also revealed a persistent gap between participation and influence over the political settlement that followed.

Despite the presence of women in the historic Jana Andolan II in 2006, the drafting committee for the interim constitution initially did not include any women. After women from political organizations and civil society called for broader representation, the 16-member Interim Constitution Drafting Committee was reorganized to include women and representatives from various classes, castes, ethnic groups, and regions. The resulting constitution was the first to mandate a minimum of 33 percent representation for women in all state bodies, including Parliament.

The first Constituent Assembly (CA) election, held in 2007, also saw a dramatic rise in the representation of women lawmakers. The first CA had 197 women out of 601 members (32.78%), a significant achievement of the Nepali women’s movement. Of the 197 women, 30 were elected under the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system, 161 under Proportional Representation (PR), and 6 were nominated by the Council of Ministers.

The first CA was the most diverse lawmaking body in Nepal’s history, reflecting the state’s transition from a unitary Hindu kingdom to a secular, federal republic. Women CA members were active participants, forming a cross-party Women’s Caucus that advocated for issues that were common to all Nepali women. The caucus pushed for representative measures like provisions for gender parity in positions like the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mayor and Deputy Mayor at the local level. The Women’s Caucus was ultimately dissolved along with the first Constituent Assembly in 2012. The second CA did not have a similar caucus, but the issues raised were ultimately incorporated into the 2015 constitution.

(Data: Democracy Resource Center / Election Commission Nepal)

Parties push back in the federal era

The 2015 constitution institutionalized Nepal as a secular, federal state while mandating inclusion and representation at all levels of the state, from the local to federal. The 33 percent quota for women in all state bodies was carried forward from the Interim Constitution, and a new mandate was instituted for women to hold either the mayor or deputy mayor position among 753 municipalities. At the five-member ward committee level, one seat was reserved for women and one for Dalit women.

While these provisions were progressive, their implementation left a lot to be desired. In the first election under the 2015 constitution, the political parties satisfied the constitutional requirements but still managed to constrain women’s political power. In the 2017 local election, 97% of mayors were men and 93% of deputy mayors were women. Federalism had mainstreamed women into office, but in roles culturally framed as “supporting” rather than “leading.”

Even this level of representation was further undercut in the 2022 local election. Political parties discovered they did not have to abide by inclusion provisions when they entered electoral coalitions and fielded only one candidate each. Parties in a coalition thus fielded one candidate each for mayor and deputy mayor, both men. This resulted in a significant decline even in the number of women deputy mayors. A study by Inclusion Economics Nepal reported that in 2022, 75 percent of women were deputy mayors, down from 93 percent in 2017.

The reluctance of political parties to field women also manifests in first-past-the-post (FPTP) contests with party-controlled ticket distribution. The constitution requires that at least one-third of each party’s members in the federal Parliament be women, but parties across the board tend to field a minimal number of women in direct elections, instead meeting the constitutional provision through proportional representation. In the March 5 election, parties fielded only 395 women out of 3,484 candidates. This tendency stems from the assumption that women are less likely to prevail over male candidates. When women are fielded, they are often placed opposite other women or in constituencies where the party does not expect to win.

Missed opportunities post the Gen Z Revolution

The political upheaval that followed the Gen Z protests of September 2025 was widely framed as a generational turning point in Nepal’s politics. Young people, including many young women, took to the streets demanding accountability, institutional reform, and a new political culture. Yet the transition that followed revealed a familiar pattern: while women were visible in the protests, institutionalizing the movement with a 10-point agreement and civic mobilization, they remained largely absent from the institutions that emerged from it.

Despite being led by Nepal’s first female prime minister, Sushila Karki, the government formed after Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s resignation included very few women. There were only three women among Karki’s 15-member Cabinet — herself, Sudha Sharma Gautam as Health Minister, and Shraddha Shrestha as Tourism Minister. While representation was a significant Gen Z demand, the political narrative was quickly reframed as “new versus old”, overshadowing the deeper agenda of inclusion that women and marginalized communities had advanced over decades of political struggle.

As Nepal moves ahead with the youngest Parliament in its political history, there are important questions that must be answered: has the political language of inclusion that emerged after the peace process lost its central place in Nepali politics? Or has the growing emphasis on technocratic governance and economic development begun to overshadow long-standing struggles for representation and social justice? Can good governance and sustainable economic development even be achieved without social justice and equal representation for all genders, ethnicities, castes, languages, and religions?

The barriers are structural

To understand why women still struggle to win elections in Nepal, it is necessary to move beyond abstractions and examine how political institutions and political culture operate.

One key pattern becomes clear when examining the careers of the most successful women politicians in Nepal: many entered politics through family networks or elite political socialization. Former President Bidya Devi Bhandari rose through the ranks of communist politics after her marriage to influential UML leader Madan Bhandari. Similarly, figures such as Arzu Rana Deuba, Hisila Yami, and Sujata Koirala emerged from families or political networks that provided early exposure to political organizing and leadership.

Political success in Nepal thus often depends on access to networks, resources, and patronage, areas where women, particularly from marginalized communities, remain structurally disadvantaged. There are important exceptions, like Onsari Gharti Magar, who exemplifies how the post-2006 inclusion agenda opened new pathways for women from historically marginalized backgrounds. Yet such trajectories remain rare.

Nepal’s post-2006 political settlement attempted to address the gender inequalities through institutional mechanisms such as gender quotas. These measures significantly increased the numerical presence of women in parliament, particularly through proportional representation. However, while quotas ensure that women occupy a certain proportion of seats, they do not necessarily transform the deeper structures of political power. Even within the quota system, representation remains uneven. Of the 48 women elected through proportional representation from the RSP, 24 are Khas-Arya or Newa, 5 Janajati, 7 each Madhesi and Dalits, 3 Muslims, and 2 Tharus. A significant share of PR seats is occupied by women with strong educational, economic, or political networks, business elites, and individuals connected to the party leadership. This reflects elite capture, where mechanisms intended for inclusion are mediated through existing networks of social and political capital. This is not unique to newer parties; established parties have long relied on similar practices, as seen in the induction of figures such as Arzu Rana Deuba and Sujata Koirala into Parliament through proportional representation.

Women from marginalized backgrounds, particularly Dalit, Madhesi, and Janajati women, face multiple, intersecting barriers that limit their access to both party networks and electoral opportunities. As a result, even systems designed to correct historical exclusion can reproduce existing hierarchies, privileging women who are already closer to power.

The cost of being a woman politician in Nepal today extends beyond institutional barriers into increasingly hostile digital spaces. As campaigning has shifted online, women candidates face gendered abuse that targets not their work but their identities, ranging from sexist commentary and character assassination to sexualized harassment and threats of violence. A recent online engagement monitoring by Kalam Weekly shows that the majority of online attacks against women candidates are explicitly gendered, aimed at delegitimizing their presence in public life rather than engaging with their political ideas.

These forms of digital violence are not incidental; they function as a mechanism of exclusion, reinforcing the perception of politics as a male domain and raising the psychological and reputational costs of participation for women. This dynamic has been particularly visible in the aftermath of the Gen Z protests, where the dominant political imagery and leadership narratives have been overwhelmingly masculine. Patriarchy does not simply persist; it adapts, reproducing itself through new socio-political and digital structures that shape who is seen, heard, and ultimately electable.

Nepal’s political history shows that women have repeatedly been central to political activism, reform, and state-building, yet they remain peripheral when power is formally distributed. The problem, then, is not women’s absence from politics but the way politics itself is organized, through party gatekeeping, patronage networks, dynastic access, unequal resources, first-past-the-post incentives, and now digital hostility. Patriarchy operates through all of these structures, shaping who gets socialized into leadership, who is seen as “winnable,” who is protected by party machinery, and who is pushed through quotas.

Women make up about 51 % of the population. A recent survey of 1,760 citizens by the International Growth Center found that women voters preferred female leaders when asked to focus on key attributes, which suggests that political parties may be underestimating women’s electoral appeal. Nepal has made undeniable progress in symbolic inclusion and numerical representation, but it is still far from a democracy in which women can enter politics on equal terms and exercise power without penalty. Until parties confront not just the absence of women, but the institutions that systematically privilege certain men and a narrow circle of elite women, inclusion will remain managed, uneven, and incomplete.

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