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http://passblue.com/2015/02/03/women-reap-some-surprising-benefits-from-nepals-ghost-economy/
NEPAL – WITH ABOUT 1/3 OF MEN AS MIGRANT WORKERS ABROAD, WOMEN IN NEPAL HAVE ACQUIRED MORE LEADERSHIP ROLES
With about a
third of Nepali men aged 15 to 44 working abroad, women have acquired more
leadership roles, like overseeing family property. Here, a scene in Kakani in
central Nepal. ARIEL SOPHIA BARDI
By Ariel Sophia Bardi - Feb 03, 2015
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Migration in this country
is omnipresent. Nearly everyone has a relative or a neighbor who works abroad,
while the Department of Foreign Employment, based in the capital here, teems
with job-seekers. Landlocked Nepal has a long history of labor exportation, but
the scope of the country’s current migration boom is unprecedented: the Persian
Gulf region alone lures more than 16,000 workers from Nepal each month.
In 131 countries around the world, Nepali
workers help construct high-rises, greet hotel guests, farm livestock and rear
children. They account for a staggering 7 percent — more than two million
people — of Nepal’s total population.
This absent population in Nepal has created a
ghost economy: its profitable workforce is at once nowhere and everywhere, changing
Nepali society in core and lasting ways. This change has been especially true
for the women left behind. While male outmigration has given female relatives
more burdens to shoulder (95 percent of migrant workers are men), it has also
helped to forge more matriarchal households, where new social arrangements have
cast women in traditionally male roles, from agricultural work to money
matters. It has led as well to a shift in reverence for daughters that had been
reserved for sons, as younger women leave for jobs overseas and send money back
home, too.
“In our community, women are always kept
inside,” explained the wife of one migrant laborer in a 2011 academic case study. But “I learnt how to
transplant rice and got to know the outside world. . . . I take these as
positive changes.”
With Nepal’s unemployment rates as high as 46 percent,
roughly a third of men aged 15 to 44 are working abroad. With few men around,
women often become the financial heads of the home. Migrant remittances form a
cornerstone of Nepal’s economy, making up at least a quarter of the country’s
gross domestic product. They fund the sales of properties and land plots, which
are often overseen by female family members. More than half of Nepal’s families
benefit from wages sent home.
“[My wife] advised me for the land and
house,” recalled Sathi Paudel, who spent five years working for a Korean
construction firm while his spouse brokered the construction of their new home
on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
For older matriarchs, however, these
conditions can be more challenging. Chato Maiya Tamang, whose eldest son works
in Malaysia, runs a tea shop in the hills of Kakani, in central Nepal. She is
happy that her son has found employment, but fears her own isolation.
“Nowadays, everybody goes [abroad],” she said. “But I say, don’t go.”
Migrant salaries, however, can be a powerful
motivator. Thuli Maya Tamang, a herder who has a granddaughter working in
Dubai, has “no worries at all” about her family’s situation. “After all,” she
explained, “she went to earn money.”
The granddaughter’s move to Dubai is
reflective of a broader trend in the rise of the female migrant laborer. Over
the past six years, the number of Nepali female workers worldwide has increased
239 percent. Until 1998, women had to obtain
parental or spousal consent to go overseas, and female migration to the Persian
Gulf was terminated from 1998 to 2010, after the well-publicized death of a
Nepali maid in Kuwait. Domestic workers in the Gulf states must still be at
least 30 years old. But younger women often migrate through unregulated
channels, putting female workers at more risk for abuse. The leading cause of
death among male workers from Nepal is heart failure; for Nepali women, it is
suicide.
Yet, while migrant workers are often cited as casualties of global capitalism, the changing face of the
labor market has also opened new opportunities for Nepali women, both at home
and beyond. Alina (she prefers not to use her real name), who is 31, single and
was raised in Bhaktapur, a medieval city in central Nepal, left a nursing career
to come to New York, where she earns higher wages working in a small nail
salon.
“I never painted nails in my whole life
before coming here,” she said. As a Nepali woman abroad, “You learn everything
by yourself . . . you’re not dependent on other people.” Alina has also dodged
family pressures to marry, so far. “If I was back in my country, I would
already have two children,” she said. She now sends money home to her parents
and three younger siblings.
“It used to be only men who had access to
better jobs and all the advantages,” said Ola Perczynska, program manager of Her Turn, a Kathmandu education and
empowerment program that works with Nepali girls. But with greater numbers of
women joining an increasingly transnational workforce, the country’s gender
dynamics have experienced a shift. “Nepali families used to favor sons,”
Perczynska said. “Nowadays they start appreciating daughters, too.”