Yeah, I had no coding experience. Let's see, is this microphone on? You can hear me through the mic?
Okay. So
Good. Ready, Strea? Okay. Alright, hello everybody.
I am Dr. Maria Elisa Christie. I'm the Director of Women and Gender in International Development here at Virginia Tech at the Center for International Research, Education and Development.
Shriya Sathaye, over there in the corner, and who you may have gotten emails from is the graduate assistant who supports this discussion series.
She's a graduate student at the School of Engineering at Virginia Tech. So welcome to the hybrid women and gender in international development discussion Series.
We have people on zoom and people in the room here. And we're happy that you could all join us virtually or in person.
for today's discussion, featuring Dr. Neeti Aryal Khanal as guest speaker.
So I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsors for today's event. So our co-sponsors with CIRED, that's how we say our Center for International Research, Education, Development, are the Women's and Gender Studies Program.
The Department of English and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Diversity Equity and Inclusion.
So we've organized today's discussion with Dr. Sweta, but yeah, please stand up for a moment who's actually the organizer of her visit of our speakers visit.
And she is an assistant, Dr. Baniya, is an assistant professor of rhetoric and professional and technical writing at Virginia Tech.
She specializes in transnational disaster studies, feminist rhetorics, non-Western rhetorical traditions, and community engagement.
So this event is a part of several things. So we're part of Women's month. So I actually would like I know Bonnie is there, director of Women's and Gender Studies here just stand up for a second.
Everybody's here okay Women's Gender Studies. And then, Anala LoMaskalo, the co-director of Women's Center, is here and this is part of Women's Month that, they organize.
So a lot of this the whole month. And then you can find that online. And it's also a special event for the Virginia Tech Principles of Community Week, which is this week.
And I'd like to read.
Okay, people on zoom please mute yourself so we don't hear noise in this room. Thank you
Is our lives and the university. We acknowledge and respect our differences while affirming our common humanity. We reject all forms of prejudice and discrimination, including those based on age, color, disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression.
National origin, political affiliation, race, religion. No, no, I'm going political affiliation.
Yeah, race, religion, sexual orientation and veteran status. We take individual and collective responsibility for helping to eliminate bias and discrimination and for increasing our own understanding of these issues through education, training, and interaction with others.
And finally, as Virginia Tech, we pledge our collective commitment to these principles in the spirit of the Virginia Tech model UtProsm that I may serve.
So, and I believe Shriya, you were putting that link in the chat for people on Zoom.
Okay, so. Alright, now, so additionally this week this discussion is just a few days before the start of Virginia Tech's first accessibility awareness week, which will be next week.
And I would like to draw attention to that. So Shriya, you put the link to that also.
You already did. She's ahead of me always. Okay. All right.
So just from the first section of their website says the inaugural Virginia Tech accessibility awareness week is scheduled for March 18th through 22nd.
2024. Modeled after global accessibility awareness day, the goal of this week is to provide learning opportunities and resources that engage the campus community to think, discuss, learn, and take action regarding digital and physical accessibility.
So they have an amazing calendar of events for next week.
Okay, now I always like to say who's registered because it's kind of fun. So as of this morning, we had 133 people registered for today's event.
So in addition to many diverse folks in the United States, we have people who join us from other countries, including Long list, Nepal, Australia, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.
Besides students, faculty and staff from Virginia Tech, we have folks joining us from lots of other universities like Kathmandu University, Tribhuvan University, Cornell University, Dhaka, University, etc.
And NGOs like Beautiful Hearts, Women's Development Innovators.
Emerge, Care Nepal, and more. Welcome to all. So please know that our event will be recorded.
The Zoom event will be recorded and available on our website later. Takes us about a week, sometimes 2 to get the transcription and then it'll be permanently on Virginia Tech's VT Works and the library site.
So for the participants on Zoom, if you by staying on now, you're consenting to be recorded, but you can turn off your camera if you don't want your image to be recorded.
Okay, so next before introducing the speaker, I'd like to invite you to reflect on Virginia Tech's land and labor recognition.
So I'm going to read the short version but it is a longer version is available on line also and that'll be.
Also in the chat. So. The land acknowledgement Virginia Tech acknowledges that we live in work on the Tutelo Monican people's homeland.
And we recognize their continued relationships with their lands and waterways. We further acknowledge that the moral land-grant College Act of 1862 enabled the Commonwealth of Virginia to finance and found Virginia Tech through the forced removal of Native nations from their lands.
In California and other areas in the West. Okay, our labor recognition, Virginia Tech acknowledges that its Blacksburg campus sits partly on land that was previously the site of the Smith field and solitude plantations.
Owned by members of the Preston family. Between the 1770s and 1860s, the Prestons and other local white families that owned parcels of what became Virginia Tech.
Also owned hundreds of enslaved people, enslaved black people generated resources that financed Virginia Tech's predecessor institution, the Preston and Olin Institute.
And they worked on the construction of its building. Okay, now some brief housekeeping notes. This is going to last approximately 45 min.
Our speakers presentation will be 20 to 25 min followed by about 20 min of discussion in Q&A with audience.
All the participants will be muted and I actually don't know if we have the ability to do that.
So please try to keep yourselves muted. I know we can be one on one by one, but it's not a webinar.
It's actually set up as a Zoom Meeting. So. As always, in order for a discussion to be as rich as it can be, we need everyone to be respectful and treat all participants with kindness and respect.
And without discriminatory behavior. So after our speaker's presentation, people can raise their hands. And by that I mean on zoom can raise your hands or here in person.
For, to ask questions by the speaker and people joining via zoom you can raise your hand through virtual buttons and we'll ask you to unmute yourself.
However, you can at any time during the talk write in, if you're on Zoom, write in your question in the chat and we'll be transferring those to a Google document and then I can read those at the end in the order that they came in.
Unless one person asked 10 questions and then I skip around. Okay, so please wait your turn to speak so we can avoid interruptions and maintain etiquette.
So again, this is being recorded, so you will have access to it on our website. In advance, I'd like to ask you to please fill out the survey that will take you 2 min.
At the end, it really is helpful. And now finally what you actually want. Dr. Neeti Aryal Khanal.
Neeti is an assistant professor at Tribhuvan University in Nepal. She's a passionate educator, feminist.
Maybe you need to be here. Feminist researcher and activist with over 2 decades of experience, she blends activism, research, and teaching with a focus on social justice.
For research spans gender and disability, armed conflict, motherhood, violence against women, and reproductive health.
Notably her work on gender-based violence and women with disabilities informs policy advocacy in Nepal.
Today she will talk about Nepal's transition from a Least developed to a developing country and how the plight of women and girls with disabilities there remains unchanged.
Her presentation and will explore how their experiences are shaped by ableism, patriarchy, and intersecting barriers.
Despite Nepal's ratification of international conventions, these marginalized groups continue to be overlooked in legislation and policies.
Dr. Khanal's research, activism spanning 2 decades highlights issues such as gender based violence, reproductive health.
And systemic barriers faced by these individuals. And I want to say that there was a great article written based on interviews with her that just came out the day before yesterday to VT news so thank you for participating in those that interview.
So the title of her talk today is Intersections of vulnerabilities: Multiple marginalized experiences of women and girls with disabilities in Nepal.
So please welcome Dr. Neeti Aryal Khanal.
Thank you very much for very, very warm welcome. Am I audible to you all? So it's it's a great honor and privilege for me.
You know women academic, teaching in a public university, in a developing country Nepal, having this platform in world's one of the leading academic institutions.
It's I feel very emotional that I am standing here today. So thank you all who have joined physically and also who have joined virtually.
And I would like to take this moment also to thank Dr. Sweta Baniya, Maria Elisa, Bonnie, Dr.
Mehra from sociology department and all the admin stuff, a lot of people are behind this to make it possible that I'm here today.
So I thank each and every one of you to make this possible. I am a teacher who teaches very long classes in Nepal.
My classes starts at 6:30 a.m. And I teach until 10 am. I kept on getting into other things never happened so This talk, making this talk here at Virginia Tech, is like ultimate push.
That I need it like okay this is a priority so it I'm very excited. So I'm going to start so today I would be talking about my position and I would be talking a little bit of contextualizing.
Women with disability and disability issues in Nepal, but I will keep it very, very short, but I feel it's important that we understand the context.
So my talk would be organized around 3 area of research that I have done and women with disability in different point of time.
So I take my research that I have done over these years as a reference point to advocate also the issues and also present what findings that I have generated.
So while I am saying these things, I am not making a claim that I have done this work single-handedly because I have been very, which I'll be talking in positionality, that how I fit into the whole picture of this activist researcher work that I consider myself doing.
And then I will be talking about the way forward. So this is very important for me to share that I come from a family with disability.
I wouldn't elaborate that story too much because it's not the time in the place.
So having that story as a part of my life always pushed me to understand the issues of disability because while growing up I saw so much stigma and suffering associated with disability so When I was 18-19 years old, together with my young friends, studying in college in Kathmandu, we started volunteering for blind organization.
Our job was like we would bring out the bulk of books. We would read it out. Recorded in the cassette and give it back to the blind people because in those days the technology of audible books and talking technology was not readily available.
So that is how I started. Getting engaged with the persons with disability. So that entry point as a volunteer also made me connected to disability community in Nepal as a you know a very strong part of the community.
So that also opened up opportunity for me to work as a numerator for some very beginning, beginning, initial research that was being done by other people, international organizations in very early 2000s.
So. Right at the cusp of me wanting to write a on something catchy, something that is delivering me a job.
What happened was 18 year old young women with partial visual impairment. She shared about her story of continuously being violated by her head teacher.
In for 6 years in a residence school, in school. So having heard that story in having met her and I searched for the research, you know, whether there are any studies that is being done on women with disability and their experience of violence.
I didn't find any. There was some formative research being done in Nepal during, 1997-1998, but the civil women were not participants and the discussion of that disabled women can be victimized or victims of gender-based violence was not yet registered.
So I then found a topic that I really wanted to do a resource on and that also made me engaged in the process of seeking justice, supporting being as part of a team led by other women with disability, friends.
We roamed the court, we are writing petitions, we were going places. So this has been like my work with women in the disability is very much based on their personal friendships and collaborations and over the years we have become you know, very close and I have found myself in a position of a researcher who I see my main work is to develop the evidence for the issues of activism raised by the women with disability community
because for the activism you need evidence as a backup. So I find often myself in that position.
So after this I will quickly. Share about Nepal I would keep it very very short and Nepal as most of you would know it's in between India and China.
It's a very small country sandwiched between 2 growing economies of Asia. And Nepal is a very multicultural country.
142 ethnic groups and this is important to remember also because experience of disabilities and this is important to remember also because experience of disability is very much shaped by also the different identities.
Other than the disability. And living in Nepal despite the progress we have done, still considered secondary citizens why because women cannot still confer directly their citizenship to their children.
It's important that, you know, they have a father and despite active contributions that where women have made in all major social movements when it comes to sharing the power.
You know, getting the fruits of those movement, often they are left out. So, but having said that, it doesn't mean Nepal hasn't had made progress in gender issues.
At all like if we see especially in an area of politics We have made a huge leap since 2008 by reserving at least 33% of seats for women.
So that has brought us a really remarkable number of 41% of local rate, 31% of women elected representatives in the local government.
So in my abstract I talk about the LTC graduation. Why? Because Nepal until now is considered as you know, as a least developed country, Least Developed Country.
It is an expurgatory plan for graduating from LDC category to DC category and it is best on certain in indicators that I show in slides.
And when I look at the lives of the marginalized people in Nepal, especially a community like women with disability, I am concerned because this graduation is happening without interest in the persisting social inequalities.
And I also believe that the set quantitative indicators that has been set for the graduation criteria is incomplete.
We should consider also whether the country has been able to reduce the inequalities or not in order to consider it.
So that is the reason why I brought the issue of DC category because Nepal is going to lose a lot of privilege in terms of aid funding in terms of support in terms of also the privilege for the paid benefits for getting lower tariffs for, you know, imports and exports.
So it's a bit of a concern for me as a researcher that this DC category is just happening in a very limited set indicators and I feel that Nepal is not yet there yet.
So, disability in Nepal, I would quickly like to say that the numbers reported has been consistently low.
And it is very much different from How disability community in Nepal claim their number because often disability community in Nepal, the benefit from the WHO reference that in both income countries where there is high level of poverty, it is more likely that there will be 50% of the total population as disabled.
But Census is Nepal, consequently we see that the report seems to be happening. So one of the reason I think is very much related to same and stigma associated with disability.
And also there is a diverse estimate in terms of number of women with disability in and male, the officer of statistics show that the number of.
Women is, lower than the men. But Global studies shows that in lower and middle income countries, women are more likely to be disabled and there are also gender related factors like for instance issues of gender based violence and all that that can increase the prevalence of disability in women than men.
But again, the data tell a very different story. So that also brings us to the point to have a very good, reliable census data.
There's so much work that needs to be done in that area. So talking about women with disabilities in Nepal.
I see that you know being a country with patriarchal ideology in practice and also shaped by very much other intersectional ideology in practice and also shaped by very much other intersection practice and also shaped by very much other intersectional identities, which I'll be talking a little bit more elaborating on my findings, which I'll be talking a little bit more elaborating on my findings, which I'll be talking a little bit more elaborating on my findings related
studies and Nepal has ratified convention relating to disability as well that guarantees the right of people with disability and Nepal also has ratified CO, which guarantees the rights of women.
In terms of ratifications and commitment to the global community, Nepal has been able to do that and also national policies Nepal has been able to make good progress.
In revising the law to make it disability friendly and women friendly and gender-sensitive. But in practice and in implementation there is still a lot of gap going on which is very much what my research is about.
We know that disabilities, so I argue that they are one of the most marginalized and vulnerable group.
My initial experience with engaging with research relating to women with disability when in early 2000 came with the experience of being, it was a left out issue on both factors.
So women rights organizations were not engaging with disability issues and disability organizations were not engaging with their you know, gender issue.
So it was a neglected issue.
So now, as I mentioned, I will be focusing on 3. Different areas of medicine. So the first area of my resources, gender-based violence, experienced by women with disability.
And I've done 3 research in that area. I've also done 3 research in that area.
I've also done other little results, but based on those 3 resource I want to share with you what I want to share and again.
I won't be able to cover all the findings. Going to give a very short snapshot of that only.
So because I worked on the issue of my first research, the thesis I wrote was on sexual violence.
And one thing I encountered was
Very much of the notion of asexual image of women with disability. The women with disability in Nepali society was seen as someone who has no sexuality or who has no sexual need.
And then, that kind of understanding among people that Sexual violence was very much associated by attractiveness, body attractiveness.
So because of the asexual image, women with disability were not recognized and considered as a priority areas for all kind of activism that was going on to combat the gender based violence.
So in my research, you know, I looked into the lifetime experience of sexual violence among blind women.
I had gone to interview in a residential hostel where women from different parts of Nepal were living in the central, capital city of Nepal.
They were studying their learning music. So they were my participants. So I asked them about their lifetime experience of violence and 70% of them reported that they had experienced and the disturbing factor and not so unknown for us as we all worth working in the area of gender based violence know
That it is from the people who are closest to women. It's within the family, it's within the community.
So many. The majority of the perpetrators were people who were known to, you know, women themselves.
So and majority of the instances of violations are actually happened in the school like the case I talked to you about.
And also that was also a violence. That was committed by blind men, but it was there was a sense of discomfort and difficulty to talk about because it would be considered as you know maybe not so Good thing to talk about as it would create a problem within the movement.
So sometimes some leading figures within the disability movement, themselves, were the perpetrators also. It was a challenging situation.
So another study that I did, I did this study with the Nepal Disabled Women's Association.
I was also accidentally there. First program officer they had received a small amount of funding they were just setting up their office and we had received some funding and I was also doing these research and I was also serving as a program officer and it was a very fascinating time for me to do this research.
This study also showed that the prevalence of violence is very, very high and later I would be talking about that when we talk about the women with disability and gender based violence it is required that how we define the violence has to be based on the women's experience because It's a different kind of experience.
So what we see as a act of violence can be a different from for women with disability. So that is why for instance, you know, issues such as being denied for the basic needs from the family, being denied from the education.
So that kind of pattern of violence was very very visible and family violence was very very visible.
So this study I did as a part of a multi-country study that was happening in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
We were looking at 3 categories of women, women with disability, we were looking at also sex workers. We were looking at lesbian women so i was looking at the data from Nepal on women with disability and this work i was engaged because of my prior years of experience in that.
So you can quite see that the nature of violence that diversity of violence is very also very much there.
So, no violence seems to have the very much there. So, violence seems to have the very highest level of reporting.
And then physical violence and then the sexual violence. So sometimes The reporting of the sexual violence in research can be very much shaped by the context very much shaped by the positionality of the researcher.
How much of the trust is between the participant and the researcher. So consistently the level of sexual violence is always reported consistently low.
Everywhere. So best strong business resource I argue that when we look into the gender based violence on women with disability, we will need to redefine what counts as violence against women because the emotional abuse that we generally understand could be a very different kind of experience were women with disability like I tend to find in my research mostly about being isolated, being ignored, horribly attacked and physical abuse, very much prevalent in family.
Families ultimate safety net in country like Nepal where we don't have a very strong welfare system where government is not very strong enough to provide be a cashier for those marginalized.
So families, the ultimate stuff in it, but sadly for, you know, women with disabilities.
The family that they are not safe in because of the shame and stigma associated with disability. So often they can be restrained, deprived of food and water.
Sometimes they are tied, and also sexual activities. I talk about forced sterilization because especially in Nepal unfortunately I have never done very deep research on women with intellectual disability, but every time I have done gender based violence because of my challenge of doing research and having as my methods are more interview based.
But I have done interviews with parents and caregivers of intellectual disabilities. So it's a huge problem.
There is forced sterilization of women with intellectual disability because it's, you know, parents often take that decision without consent to avoid any possible pitfalls that could arise out of sexual violence and unwanted pregnancy.
And the same associated with it. So now I'm talking about the second area of my research. Here I have got a quote from a very inspiring young women, leader named Sarat Lamisani and she heads and organization that I often collaborate with.
We do our training together, workshops together and I'm going to quickly translate what she writes over here.
So she says that, "The sexuality of women with disability is seems to be seen very differently from normal women.
It is seen as if women with disability does do not have any sexual needs or if they expense it it is as if It is a disaster for the society or something.
So I found this very powerful because you know there's a very thriving advocacy currently going on in Nepal about sexual reproductive health.
So in 2013 when I finished the research project when I wrote a grant proposal sometime in 2012 I saw a lot of advocacy on sexual and reproductive health rights that the women with disability were really leading, but we didn't have any data.
To push the advocacy, push the policy change. So I collaborated with them and then said, what if I do resource in this area and then we can bring something out of it.
So that is how I happen to get this fellowship that allowed me some time and also research resources to do research on sexual and productive health of motherhood experience of women with disability.
So the context of that was in 2009. National organization working with women with disability in the power called NDWA.
They had filed the public interest litigation on the grounds that women with disabilities are denied from right to reproductive health.
So then Supreme Court also issued a directive orders to ensure that the reproductive health services in the hospital has to be disability friendly.
So after that the main struggle was to help us understand. First, also train the health care workers how we can give disability family services.
In one hand, the issue was very much about the physical accessibility. But the on the other hand as a sociologist I saw the deeper problem very much was about how motherhood was seen in relation to women with disability because the position of disabled people women with disability or people with disabilities very much someone who needs to be cared for, right?
They are positioning the society someone who needs care. Because they are unable because of the discourse of you know, ableism defines them as somebody who is not able to care for themselves so that they need to be cared for.
Saw that women with disability started getting married You know, and they want you to embrace the motherhood as well.
And then there was a lot of resistance from the medical community. There was a lot of discriminatory, the stories of discriminatory behaviors was coming about because at that same time the friends that I had started working in 2000 they had gotten married they were having babies so they were my very friends who were going to the hospital and coming back with stories that the doctors said to me that have to be a mother how you can take care of a
child I mean you were not able to take care of yourself I mean You know, you should rethink.
This decision. So those kind of stories were coming in. So I did this research, blend of both quantitative and qualitative approach and I had a lot of stories of women sharing the stigma of not being considered a good mothers or not being able to be a good provider because of this concept of abolism.
So one of the major data that came out of my resource was that the disability friendly infrastructure, based on experience of women with disability, was majority.
like that. In Nepal it is still like that. I wouldn't say it hasn't been progress.
We have had now we have made a directory for the health care providers about the disability-sensitive health care behavior.
But in terms of the change, it's still very slow and there's still so much work that needs to be done.
Now the final area of research. I hope I still have some time left. So institutional and policy barriers.
So I engaged in this area of research. In the midst of Corona, I started this 2021 study, the whole year while the COVID was going on.
We did mostly the work through virtual medium and then, 2022. So this both of the studies were actually, to me, by 2 leading disabled women organization.
Research was very much based on the policy analysis. So which later out we talk about why I call it institutional and policy barrier.
So I would like to take a bit of a time first to talk about the barriers because one of the things that I want to talk about is also the barriers are very much intersectional.
So the very definition of UMCRPD, which is like the main international convention that frames the disabilities.
It centers the definition of barrier. Connecting with the disability. It is not the physical aspect of disability that makes people disabled, but the physical aspect interacting with the barriers that are out there that creates the disability experience.
So I'm going to be a little bit faster so that we respect the time so barriers can be both visible and invisible So based from this research I have identified 4 main barriers.
So social barriers are basically about the prejudices and stereotypes and discriminations that people feel, physical barriers are more visible than social barriers, it's very much about the natural and man-made environment.
And the another one which I found fascinating to work on during this experience of doing this research is communication barrier, how we communicate, how we put out the information online offline face-to-face and how accessibility is.
And then last but not the least institutions, institutional and policy barriers. So that was the area of my research.
The third area of research that I am presenting on. So I argue that but these barriers don't work in isolation.
These barriers are deeply connected to one another. So in order to visualize it, together with my student we worked very hard to create this infographic.
That helps us to understand that how intersects and interact with one another.
So, and also while analyzing the policy I was driven by my main question was who makes the policy for women with disability who sit on the table that makes the decision on women with disability.
That was the driving question that I Help me push on that story and I realize, It's a, of women with disability in Nepal have never been in that position in the table to make policy themselves, which I'll be telling you without the gaps.
So my main argument is that all kinds of policy on people with disability persons with disability are working on an intersection of, ableism and patriarchy, Patriarchy part, I would skip it because we all are well versed in it.
But, ableism I would like to take some time to explain so it is very much about an ideology that shapes people's thinking that persons with disability are less than person without disability.
So 4 mean categories are there so because how we define normal and natural and another is person with disabilities.
are not seen as an ideal citizen. How citizenship is defined and another is that the idea of independent, which is a very much of an item that humans are never independent, you know, humans.
Are interdependent. Maybe they can lead their life independently. So this idea that the independence, the definition of independence is very much shaped by the ableism and the forced separation.
So.
This perspective I in the policy barrier I mean One way of my data generation was very simple. What I did was I simply did the word search.
On policies that were made for gender equality and also I did the word search and policy that was made for persons with disability.
And I came across a very interesting finding. Because when I looked at the policy that is designed for the gender equality to foster gender equality.
Women with disability were mostly invisible. And I find it
Important because if you don't make it in the policy it's never going to come up in the implementation.
They have to be named, they have to be identified, otherwise the logic usually given when we talk about these kind of issues, speed for everyone.
But it's not like that. So that is why I Think about another thing quite interestingly is that there's still more commission.
If I looked into the representation of women with disability in all major policy making. You know, commissions that work on the policies, no representation at all.
There is not a single representation on very newly formed National Inclusion Commission. Not a single person with disability, not a single woman with disability.
So now I'm going to finish it. So I think We all working on these issues in Nepal.
We really need to push towards formation of commission on persons with disability very much ensuring the active participation of women with disability from diverse background.
And it was sexual representations on different combinations. And last but not the list. In that time we have had a very long experience of dealing with caste based discrimination.
I would say the problem hasn't solved entirely. It's more, you know, easier to deal with it because it has been criminalized through the through the introduction of the act because any act of cased based discrimination is now a criminal act that you can report to the police and they can be arrested.
So one of the recommendation I also have suggested is that The discrimination against persons with disability also needs to be criminalized because there's so much discrimination that they face.
So thank you all very much for listening to the talk. And I look forward to the questions and the comments.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. So, okay. Okay, so we have 2 mics here. I don't have access to the zoom, so I can't see. I don't have access to the zoom so I can't see if there's been any no message.
Okay. If people would like to speak, this room is mic-ed so people on Zoom will hear you without the microphone but if you don't have a loud voice it will help other people in the room here if you're using the microphone.
So please raise your hand and we have plenty of people here to have a Q&A, this is a discussion series, so it's not just questions, it's discussion, so.
Please, I look forward to hearing. We have a lot of people here interested in this topic. So.
Are you raising it? No, no, you just pointing. Alright, here we have somebody.
Okay, and maybe say your name or something. Okay. I'm gonna. Thank you.
Thank you for the talk. That was very interesting. My name is Rocksha Sharma. Hi, thank you. Thank you for the talk. That was very interesting.
My name is Rocksha Sharma. I just have a simple question. Since you mentioned disability is or disability discrimination is not criminalized in Nepal.
What about the persons with Disabilities Act? What does the law say when you discriminate against somebody? Let's say in employment you did not hire somebody based on their disability.
You don't hear me? Okay. I'll repeat my question. So my question is, Is are there the law, the persons with Disabilities Act?
Of Nepal? Does it not? Punish individuals or let's say employers. When they don't hire people based on their disability.
Like what is what is the criminal action against those individuals? Thank you so much. Very important question. So, I want to quickly summarize your question.
You wanted to know about the provision for the employment for the people with disability and also the discrimination associated with employment?
Sure, yes. Okay. So.
There are provisions and also there are provisions in the disability related act and also there is provision in the Civil Service Act and also the act relating to education.
There is a provision that persons with disability are given reservation. Like there's a currently a 5% reservation that people with disability can compete for their civil service examinations.
So some of my friends have now gone and becoming, you know, the government officers. But there are still some provisions that are in the employment act or economic act which I have done in my report which I am happy to share that there are certain provisions in which Persons with disability, it's able to result in out of while doing the job, they could lose the job because there is a criteria of physical fitness that can exclude
people with disabilities still for certain professions like That was a town where women with disabilities, students with disability, who are women, because nursing is very lucrative.
Subject to study in Nepal. Women with disability have denied entry in nursing schools because of the criteria of the physical fitness.
So even With very minor impairment, for instance, a slight link in the leg or maybe minor vision related, were denied entry because there's a clause that says that the students studying not things should be physically fit.
So there are still discriminatory positions that you know, works to exclude people. Yeah, thank you for the question.
Thank you. I just want to go ahead and read one of the comments on the chat. So one person responding to something that you had said, I think we'll all know what she's talking about.
Said I had that happen to me too, my provider offered a hysterectomy and I'm only 22.
Hi, my name is Papitralia. I was kind of curious to know, you kind of include the disabled women in your research.
What was the criteria of the disability in your research? Just include the physical disability or you touch base on a little bit on the intellectual disability too, but what about other major disability like mental disability and other?
And I have heard in some of the during my childhood in the village. Majorly disabled women with mental disability have some kind of story about the sexual harassment.
So have you included those women's in your research and how hard it was to you know, take an interview with their parents or there could be lots of errors in answer, of course, but how did you handle with that?
How did you deal with that?
Thank you. Very interesting question. Depending on different research that I have done, but like I said earlier, my presentation despite, you know, wanting to be very inclusive.
I acknowledge my bias that I always had difficulty assessing, women with intellectual disability. Family studies were very much specific and particular community like I shared that my thesis was just on the blind women only.
But other forthcoming research I had done on women with visual impairment, also the hearing impairment and the physical disability.
So. I struggled based on, you know, the type of disability with the blind women because I had a very good friendship and all that it was easier with the deaf community it was a little bit hard but especially the research that I did on sexually reproductive health I learned a lot in terms of interviewing techniques, I was doing focus group with deaf women, they were sharing stories about their experience of assessing
reproductive health services. While they going on to deliver their babies. So we had a sign language interpreter.
So process was very, very slow, but it was very deeply engaging, and communication because I realized we rely so much only on the verbal communication, right?
So with the deaf community, the non-verbal cues, the body language, the facial expressions were also the thing that I could learn to disciple and then over the years we developed really very good friendship like they invited me to their peace program where they were having some you know dance competition among the death women they were not hearing music but they were Hmm, dancing.
So I think I I learned because the main thing I realized working with kind of marginalized community. The main thing is as a researcher, respect.
That is the main connector, I think. I worst of the thing, if you have that, if you're respectful, the technicalities I think you will learn over the time, you know.
So for me, always. Having that respectful behavior and also because we developed friendship over the time.
It was not just the researcher research relationship. It was more like of 2 friends coming together to have a conversation.
So that helped ease my, interviewing and all that. So there were certain challenges relating to disability to navigate that.
Thank you for asking.
Good afternoon. My name is Audrey Reeves. I'm based in political science here.
Thank you very much for your talk. My question has to do with and The relationship between what you observed in Nepal and what the research community globally has found on the intersection of gender and disability.
In your research, have you found anything that challenges or complicates broader understanding of gender and disability as it's understood like globally?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I couldn't talk about it here because I discovered very lately the perspective of ableism and I wanted to feel that in today but I found perspective of families critic of disability quite powerful in the way that kind of brings basically in disability when we do research like 2 main model seems to be very much in contestation with one another.
One is very much of a biological medical model that sees disability as a pathology or some kind of a physical defect.
But the social model is very much about looking at the socio constructions of the disability. So, Feminist Critic.
Kind of brings in and analysis of you know the dual marginalization of women with disability. So I found that quite powerful to look into, but lately I've discovered this perspective of ableism because I found it very interesting that Everything that we The people without disability, how we think, how we behave is very much shaped by able to perspective.
So often there's a lot of unconscious bias that could be exercised even by ourselves against the community.
Bringing that into discussion with intersection of evilism and patriarchy also could be one of the model that we could look into.
You know, situation of women with disability.
Thank you so much for your work. This was an incredible overview of what you've been doing for a long time.
I'm Christine. I'm in Women's and Gender Studies. And I think just thinking with this Audrey's question, and I think just thinking with this Audrey's question, and I think just thinking with this Audrey's question, and I apologize.
I don't have a perfectly formed question, but I'm thinking about motherhood and the reproductive sort of.
Dimensions of disability and the ways you were talking about disability, a disabled person is a sort of failed citizen and in some ways in many ways they're also sort of failed mothers right or failing or will fail.
And so I'm just thinking about queer women and in the context of intersectionality. If you could just talk a little bit about what you know or have observed or learned about.
Queerness in your context and how and whether it functions as.
At all liberatory because it can be outside of some of these other heteronormative spaces, but I imagine is also quite intersectionally compounded intersectionally harmful or difficult. Yeah.
Thank you. That is something that I very much want to explore in my book. So that's a very And good question that I need to delve deeper in 2013 study I had a unique challenge The activism media data and reproductive health services accessibility but my prior experience of resource at Motherhood.
I was very much interested in the socio-cultural construction of motherhood and how it plays out in experience of women with disabilities.
So I tried to blend. Little bit of both and the way that I have done was bringing in the narrative of motherhood experiences of women with disability, how they see themselves as a mother.
So I think it's very much shaped by the notions of motherhood in Nepali context, South-Asian context, motherhood, there's a notion of compulsory motherhood because everybody If we were to, you know.
For ultimate life path is like you are born, you get young, you get married. And then you have babies.
Straightforward path right there. So having married. Means everybody expects you're gonna have baby some day.
But with women with disability. There's a lot of it's very much collected, deeply connected with the sexuality or how sexuality of women with disabilities viewed as well.
So in terms of motherhood that duel identity of being cared for and caregiver and also I think our way of looking at motherhood at something that is single-handedly done by a single mother, the way we understand the caring responsibilities of motherhood at sole responsibility of mother alone, so we don't see mothering as a shared responsibility within the family.
It is again the ultimate responsibility of the women themselves and when it comes to women with disability. Needing support.
To do that everybody needs their support to take care of children whether you are disabled or not but then that our ideology that it has to be done solitary, by yourself.
You should be capable to do that that our understanding of capability is very much also at play there I think but I would love to unpack this because Thank you for giving me food for thought.
Yeah. So I want to officially end this meeting because the zoom it's exactly 1:30 so, but I want to let the people in the room know that we have this room for another half hour so you're welcome to come up but thank you very much Dr. Khanal
for an amazing presentation.
Okay, so and then. We are sharing a short survey as I mentioned earlier. It's really amazing.
We usually get like 3% response. Come on, you guys, let's change it this time.
Do it. It helps us raise money for this discussion series which we've had going for, at least the 17 years that I've been here, but we have to show that if people care about it.
So our next event is going to be a special session looking at masculinities and women's empowerment in development projects.
That'll be on April 11th. You'll hear about it, you'll get an email about it.
And it'll be a virtual presentation so everybody can join on Zoom. Check out our website for more information.
And take some bagels on the way out if you're in the room. I'm sorry those of you on Zoom cannot have a bagel, but thank you all so much.
Okay