During the first month of literacy classes, women discussed men's card playing, drinking and violence against women while learning how to read and write letters. They discussed how men waste money on gambling and drinking that should be used to buy food for the family. Drunken men also harass women along the pathways. Women expressed the greatest outrage over men returning home after drinking and gambling to beat their wives. They recognized the need for women to develop some solidarity with one another and intervene when husbands were beating their wives....

Another key word which fired women's imagination was dauraa (firewood). As they learned how to make words from syllables, they also explored the increasing scarcity of firewood, fodder and shade trees in Chitwan.

Older women began to narrate stories of 30 years ago when the forest of Chitwan had been cleared for resettlement. They remembered how powerful men had forcibly claimed portions of the common grazing lands and gradually diminished their access to fodder. Women had to travel increasingly far to collect firewood and fodder. In their daily journeys, they found few trees along the pathways to provide shady resting places. The women composed a song about this and the need for all women to join together to plant trees. In the song they used words which they had already learned how to spell in class.

Regenerating Women's Space

The literacy classes might have given women little new knowledge, except the ability to recognize and write letters and words. But the classes gave them a moral strength and a legitimate space to retell their untold stories and reassert their subjugated knowledge. Literacy sessions were, as one participant put it, "listening to yourself and your own struggles as a granddaughter listens

We are sweating a lot;
it has become so hot, Oh, sister!
Let us all listen.
We can no longer find fodder and firewood.
Let us plant trees. Oh, sister!

Where there are no trees,
it is not cool. Oh, sister!
The water springs cannot emerge.
Oh, sister! We cannot find fodder and firewood.
Let us plant trees. Oh, sister!

There is no forest left in Chitwan anymore.
We have to go to Palpali hill.
Oh, sister! It is impossible to find fodder and firewood.
Let us plant trees. Oh, sister!

Let all of us plant trees.
Let us not suffer for fodder and firewood.
Listen, sister, all of us are suffering.

_______________

to her grandmother." They unveiled their personal struggles and brought them into public, political discourses. They questioned what they had gained and lost in the pursuit of development. They asked: Is this mode of development suitable to women's identities? Can development be achieved only at the expense of commons, forest and water sources? Who can be blamed when things go wrong?

Discussions of other key words such as, gahanaa (ornaments), or sautaa (cowife), saasu-buhaari (conflictual relations between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law), led women to evaluate their own roles as daughters, wives and mothers. They asked: Why do mothers-in-law so often mistreat their daughters-in-law? Why do women have to wear heavy ornaments in order to prove that they are beautiful and rich? Do ornaments give women prestige and power or confine them to the boundaries of their households? How can women build unity among themselves? The questions generated lively debate among older and younger women.

Such discussions led to increasing concern for the social and cultural environment not only of households, but also of the public spaces of Gunjanagar and surrounding communities....

For many weeks, women throughout the village discussed how they had no space in which to meet. They did not feel entirely safe or welcome anywhere. We held literacy classes in the private spaces of people's homes to avoid the gangs of young men who frequented public spaces.

However, women became increasingly angry over their exclusion from public spaces to which they had contributed both money and labour. Women donated money to the local schools but did not feel safe organizing meetings or classes there, especially at night. They gave money for the construction of the Hindu temple and village meeting area but had to ask permission from the all male temple committee to use the area. Low caste women expressed outrage at the priests who chased them off the temple grounds and ridiculed their offerings when they came to worship.

Women's concerns for space crystallized in the International Women's Day celebration of March 8, 1988.... Some leaders, inspired by the success of literacy classes and discussions, argued that women had developed the power and confidence to develop a more comprehensive program for improving women's lives. They urged women to join together to demand a plot of common land... and build a "Women's Centre." This demand gave voice publicly to ideas that hundreds of women had been whispering about for weeks.

This demand for a women's meeting and training centre which women had dreamed about but never thought possible until publicly articulated, became the subject of many meetings held over the following months....

Dramas, Poems and Songs

Throughout Nepal, women of all castes express their frustration, anger and joy through poetry and song. Women of lower castes and Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups participate in singing and dancing on many occasions. High caste Brahmin and Chhetri women can legitimately express themselves through song and dance only on certain occasions such as weddings and in the annual women's festival, Teej. They sing songs that have been sung for generations, expressing the difficulties of child marriage, conflicts between cowives, or between mothers-in-law (saasu) and daughters-in-law (buhaari). Creative women often write their own poetry and introduce songs with the appropriate themes in festivals. Some become part of the repertoire.

We found at first that many women poets did not share poems and songs which expressed their deepest anger. They sang such songs to themselves at night and shared only those songs which would be socially accepted. As the women's struggle developed in the village, women poets emerged from their self-imposed isolation and began sharing their most creative works with one another. Women in the literacy classes wrote down poems which they had carried in their heads for years and also composed new ones related to the movement. Sanu Maya, one of the participants in the literacy program, expressed the injustice done to young women when they are sent away to a strange family in marriage in order to gain merit for parents and relatives. She also expressed her hope for the powers of women's unity and mobilization:

Oh, sisters, let us march ahead, united.
All our power is already lost, humiliated
not one single day, but everyday.
United let us overcome this exploitation.

This sinful society is unjust to us,
which gives us in marriage to an
unknown, to remain under him.
But our own brothers remain in our parents' home.

For parents, are not sons and daughters the same?
Then why do you send daughters away like cows,
in kanyaadaan to gain merit?
How can you give away an innocent child in marriage?

_______________

Women also expressed themselves through drama. All-women dramas form part of women's ratauji celebration of Brahmin and Chhetri wedding ceremonies. Women gather at the groom's house while men go to fetch the bride. There they act out dramas which express not only domestic conflicts, but also humorously instruct younger girls about sexuality.

In order to build on the pedagogical potential of drama and poetry, we conducted a theatre workshop for village women under the guidance of theatre activists from Calcutta who teach agricultural labourers and other poor, rural groups in India how to problematize their social reality through drama....

In the final two days of the workshop, women worked in teams to compose, practise and perform more complex skits. They also acted out a number of social situations. In each one, they portrayed a man - a doctor, a father, or a landlord —exploiting women. All the dramas ended with the women over coming their exploitation and punishing their oppressors.

In one skit, a young woman goes to a local doctor and complains about her weakness, stomach pains and diarrhea. The doctor advises her to take some expensive pills and tonic but not eat any greens, fruit or eggs. She reluctantly gives the doctor all the money she has and then on her way home meets a woman health worker and explains what happened. The health worker becomes angry and takes the sick woman back to the doctor, whom she accuses of being exploitative and poorly trained. She demands the women's money back and then takes the doctor by the ears and shames him in front of the community.

This sketch dramatized a common occurrence in the village v/here local compounders (pharmacists) sold anemic women expensive worm medicine and vitamin syrup rather than advising them to eat more nutritious food. Women in the literacy classes had been discussing such incidents and thus raised awareness among women throughout the village.

Another sketch linked women's health problems more directly to domestic politics. Here a young woman who just gave birth weakly pleads for water and food. Her mother-in-law, cooking in the kitchen, and her husband, eating his meal, ignore her pleas. They complain
about the birth of yet another girl and discuss the prospects of bringing a second wife, who might give birth to a son. Eventually, some women activists intervene, give the woman food and water and publicly humiliate the man and his mother. This skit dramatized known incidents where women who gave birth to girls did not receive adequate food and medical treatment. Several days before the drama workshop, a woman had actually died about a week after giving birth to her third girl. Women claimed she had not been properly cared for and that the husband felt relieved to be rid of her so he could take a new wife....

The Women's Center

Women looked beyond their initial formulation of the Women's Centre as a place for having skills training and meetings and envisioned it as a focal point for women's empowerment. Women rejected the notion of merely being "integrated into development." They no longer trusted male leaders to speak of "development."

Women saw themselves as uniquely qualified to make the community more healthy and humane for both women and men. Women developed plans for a Mahila Jagaran Kendra (Women's Empowerment Centre) which will eventually encompass a wide range of programs, including the ongoing literacy classes, nurseries of fruit and fodder trees, co-operative handicraft production, an ashram for destitute women, a health collective especially for pregnant women and sutkeri (postpartum women), a program for self sufficiency in vegetable gardening and nutrition, and legal services to make women aware of their legal rights.

However, women rank their highest priority as improving the local ecology and contributing to everyone's health and well-being by planting trees. As they are developing this program they continue to organize and educate women throughout the village about the importance of building solidarity among women.

Source: Convergence Convergencia International Council for Adult Education No.l, vol.XXin, 1990 720 Balhurst Street, Suite 500 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2R4 tel: (416) 588-1211 fax (416)588-5725