ABSTRACT
The inclusion and empowerment of women is a primary target or entrance point into post-conflict societies across the Global South, usually pinned from the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. In Nepal, this has contributed to the belief that a foreign agenda is driving societal change. Critics have lamented the development of ‘the Nepali woman’ as a single overarching category, one that has been (and continues to be) artificially constructed by foreign donors but damaging to the women’s movement in Nepal through its forced consolidation of radical ethnic and cultural diversities (Tamang 2009). This lens has tended to offer over-simplifications of gender roles in politics and conflict in Nepal, especially regarding women fighters and assumptions of fighting as ‘empowerment’ (Leve 2007). Further, over-representation of upper-caste Hindu women as ‘key native informants’ in most gender projects of international aid and development organizations has done significant damage to both international and local perceptions of what a ‘Nepali woman’ is, irrespective of the project’s outward ‘efficiency’ or operational success (Tamang 2011).
